ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

The Secretary of State was asked—

Guyana

Andrew Pelling: What work his Department is undertaking with the Government of Guyana to promote the preservation of the rain forest in that country.

Gareth Thomas: We regularly discuss forest protection with the Guyanese. We are working directly with the Government of Guyana, and through the World Bank, to help Guyana to conserve its rain forests. We expect a national consultation on that work to begin in Guyana next month.

Andrew Pelling: Will the Government consider proposing at the Copenhagen climate summit at the end of the year—as has been suggested in Guyana—international oversight of the Guyanese rain forest, so that it can become an important carbon sink and present a potential low-carbon investment opportunity?

Gareth Thomas: The short answer to the hon. Gentleman's question is yes, but, if I may, I shall give him a slightly longer answer. We need to get right the international oversight and the whole question of deforestation and forest degradation. The hon. Gentleman will know that a number of other rain forests are hugely important internationally, and we need to think about how best we can work with countries. We are giving resources not only directly to the Guyanese but to a number of other countries, to help them to deal with exactly this issue.

Tom Clarke: Does my hon. Friend recall that in January, in a reply to a question from me, his Department said that some of its officials would be meeting their opposite numbers in Guyana? Was that meeting fruitful, and has it been followed up? The question is all the more important because, as he will know, the loggers are not the easiest people with whom to deal.

Gareth Thomas: My right hon. Friend is right in saying that the loggers, particularly the illegal loggers, are very difficult to deal with. We have been working for some time, not only in Guyana but in a number of other developing countries, to help Governments to tackle illegal logging. As my right hon. Friend says, we have been meeting the Guyanese regularly, and we are helping them to develop a national strategy to manage their rain forest. As I said to the hon. Member for Croydon, Central (Mr. Pelling), a national consultation on those measures will begin shortly in Guyana.

David Evennett: In 2005, floods caused economic damage to 60 per cent. of Guyana's GDP as a result of changing weather patterns. What is being done to help the poorest developing countries to adapt to the effect of changing weather patterns and climate change?

Gareth Thomas: We are working with a range of developing countries, including Guyana. The Department is not only providing resources directly through its bilateral budgets but is working closely with international organisations such as the World Bank. We are providing a number of developing countries with staff with expertise who will be able to help them to develop their own strategies for tackling climate change.

David Taylor: As the Minister knows, the great majority of the world's remaining rain forests are within the boundaries of developing countries. We have heard about the international supervision that may emerge in Guyana. What is the potential for a carry-over to other nations? I am thinking not least of the difficulties that can be caused by bribery, corruption and instability in the regimes of some of the countries where rain forests are located.

Gareth Thomas: My hon. Friend makes a key point, as did my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke) before him. If we are to tackle the problem of deforestation, we must work with those countries to improve forest governance. We have already been working with the forest Ministries of a number of developing countries, and with other parts of their Governments, to tackle corruption and improve the quality of governance. I am sure that my hon. Friend will be interested to learn that from 1 April we shall be strengthening still further our public procurement guidelines on the use of timber from rain forests in developing countries more generally.

Greg Mulholland: The Minister has described the support that his Department is giving to various areas, including Guyana. The Norwegian Government have just provided $1 million for the land regularisation scheme in Brazil, which is another area of concern. Does the Minister support that scheme, and is the Department funding it as well?

Gareth Thomas: We are not funding it directly as yet, but we are working with the Brazilian national bank, which is looking into the issue. The Brazilians have dramatically stepped up their work to tackle deforestation, and we have been working with a number of players, including the national bank, to support that work. The hon. Gentleman might recall from previous discussions that money is available from the climate investment funds at the World Bank. When it comes on line, Brazil may well wish to apply for direct help of that kind.

HIV/AIDS

Russell Brown: What recent discussions he has had with his international counterparts on global efforts to tackle HIV/AIDS.

Ivan Lewis: DFID Ministers and officials maintain an extensive dialogue with key international partners. I have recently discussed AIDS issues with senior figures at the global fund, the World Health Organisation, the UN Population Fund and the World Bank, and with Ministers during recent country visits to Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda.

Russell Brown: I thank the Minister for his reply. Thanks to the co-operation of branded pharmaceutical companies, generic competition in HIV drugs has reduced first-line drug prices for patient treatment from more than $1,000 a year to less than $100. As well as persuading his other Government counterparts to take HIV seriously, what more can the Minister do to persuade more companies to adopt an enlightened, co-operative approach and help reduce prices for second-line HIV drugs, which are so desperately needed as they do save lives, but which remain very expensive?

Ivan Lewis: My hon. Friend raises an important issue. Our aim is to reduce the cost of HIV/AIDS drugs by £50 million a year over the next few years. Only this week, I wrote to UNITAID asking it to set out a timetable for the launch of a patent pool for HIV medicines. I welcome GlaxoSmithKline's recent commitment to explore the potential for patent pools to make the development of new medicines for neglected tropical diseases easier, and I believe the time has now come for other pharmacological companies to respond positively to this initiative and join forces so that we can make the contribution to driving down prices and improving access to HIV/AIDS drugs.

Nigel Evans: Antiretroviral drugs are rightly being made more affordable and generally more available, thanks to the support of the United Kingdom, the United States of America and organisations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Education is vital, and we should be focusing some of our attention on prevention. What discussions has the Minister held with his opposite numbers about ensuring that education is made available so that the message about how people can avoid getting HIV in the first place can be communicated, and particularly about trucking routes in some countries, such as India, and in Africa?

Ivan Lewis: The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point. The new American Administration's recent announcement about removing some of the ideological and philosophical barriers that prevented us from engaging internationally on prevention and education presents an opportunity for the world community to come together and make a greater impact. We have announced an unprecedented commitment of £1 billion for the global fund and £6 billion to strengthen health systems, but the hon. Gentleman is right to say that we must look innovatively and imaginatively—perhaps through community leaders, faith group networks, informal networks and peer influence—at educating populations in every country. We have to use all the tools at our disposal to ensure that we get across the strongest conceivable message about HIV/AIDS. I also believe that the South Africans' change in policy will significantly help us in Africa.

Hilary Armstrong: My hon. Friend knows that HIV/AIDS particularly affects women and children in the poorest countries. What are he and the Government doing to work with other countries to make sure that at a time when the economic situation is giving such difficulty, particularly to the poorest countries, the international community none the less keeps up its commitment to supporting the poorest in tackling such tragic diseases as HIV and AIDS?

Ivan Lewis: My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I pay tribute to the tremendous work she has done over many years on these issues. The Prime Minister has made it absolutely clear that this is not the moment for the world to retreat from its commitment to the developing world, such as through his advocacy through the World Bank of a vulnerability fund to ensure we protect the most vulnerable at a time when the recession will hit them the hardest, and the reform of international institutions to make sure they are far more responsive to the needs of the developing world, and our hosting last week in London of a meeting of senior African leaders to ensure that they have a strong and clear voice in the forthcoming G20 summit. It is important that as we fix the international economic system we make sure that that fixing advantages, rather than disadvantages, the developing world.

Gary Streeter: The Minister, to his credit, is known for his outspokenness. Will he make sure that his international counterparts recognise that confronting the dreadful disease that is HIV/AIDS is not just about access to drugs and condoms, important though those things are? If we are to tackle this disease, we must confront, head-on, the true cause: men behaving in a sexually promiscuous manner in too many countries throughout Africa and elsewhere. Will he impress upon his counterparts the fact that issues of public awareness and education are vital if we are to get under the skin of this disease?

Ivan Lewis: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said that I was not outspoken any longer—I rarely disagree with him, and I am not going to start now.
	The hon. Gentleman rightly raises the important issue of the role of women in society, and highlights the fact that the way in which men in many developing countries see relationships is a major part of the problem. In that sense, we need strong political leadership to make clear the appropriate role of women in society and to empower women in local communities. We must make it clear that we give them the opportunity to fight for their rights. We also need a very clear zero-tolerance approach to violence against women to be enshrined in developing countries' legislation.

Mark Durkan: Organisations such as Concern Worldwide stress the need for conditional linkages between the issues of HIV/AIDS, and nutrition and food security. Will the Government do more to support efforts to integrate HIV prevention, mitigation, care and treatment with programmes dealing with livelihood, nutrition and food security?

Ivan Lewis: The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point; we need to make a link between rural communities, agricultural development, food security and diseases. We want increasingly, at a local level, to integrate our responses, bringing together health, education and food security. The aim is to operate in an integrated way, rather than in silos.

Andrew Stunell: The global downturn makes health care in the least developed nations increasingly problematic. Will the Minister reassure the House that the UK Government will press ahead with prevention programmes and will not be deflected either by the falling value of the pound or the sincerely held but mistaken views of others?

Ivan Lewis: The Prime Minister has made it absolutely clear that our commitment in respect of 0.7 per cent. of gross national income by 2013 remains as strong as ever, so there will be no retreating from our commitments. We are the second-largest bilateral donor in terms of health systems and the attack on diseases in the world—as I said in my answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Durham (Hilary Armstrong), this Government will not retreat from our commitments. More importantly, we will provide leadership on occasions such as meetings of the G20 and the G8 to make sure that other international leaders do not walk away from the commitments that they have made, largely as a result of leadership shown by our Prime Minister and this country.

Gaza (Reconstruction)

Andrew Gwynne: If he will take steps to ensure that funding under pledges for reconstruction in Gaza made at the Egyptian donor conference will not be channelled through Hamas.

Joan Humble: To which programmes his Department plans to allocate the £30 million announced on 1 March 2009 for the reconstruction of Gaza; and if he will make a statement.

Douglas Alexander: Participants in the Sharm el Sheikh conference expressed their intention to deliver reconstruction aid to Gaza through existing international and regional financing mechanisms. The £30 million that I announced will be spent through those mechanisms and through non-governmental organisations that are not affiliated with Hamas and have robust monitoring systems. Priority programmes will include the repair of homes and schools, the clearance of unexploded ordnance and the short-term creation of jobs.

Andrew Gwynne: I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer, and I commend the British Government's commitment to getting aid into Gaza to support the urgent reconstruction. Given that Hamas recently stole United Nations aid and has allowed unexploded weapons under its guard to go missing, does he agree that it is now important to get an increased Palestinian Authority presence in Gaza to monitor the crossings and to free up the aid so that it gets to ordinary Palestinians, who desperately and urgently need that help?

Douglas Alexander: My hon. Friend raises a number of different points. When I was in Gaza recently, I took the opportunity to discuss with John Ging, the head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency there, concerns about the misappropriation of any aid resources. He was able to assure me that at the point at which we met the supplies were getting through, and that we had robust monitoring mechanisms and continue to do so. On the Palestinian Authority, we of course welcome the fact that, under the auspices of the Egyptian Government, reconciliation talks are under way. On the specific issue that my hon. Friend raises about authority at the border posts, it is, of course, the European Union's position that we have offered assistance through the EU border assistance mission. We hope that we will be able to find a way through by a combination of the political reconciliation talks that are under way and maintaining in the minds of the international community the continuing importance of the Palestinian Authority.

Joan Humble: I welcome the Secretary of State's announcement about additional aid for Gaza, but what steps can he take to ensure that dual-use materials such as metal pipes do not fall into the hands of militants to be converted into weapons, but are used to improve the lives of the people of Gaza?

Douglas Alexander: There is of course a long-established and trusted list of dual-use materials. It is a matter of great regret, therefore, that that has not been the basis on which the Israeli Government have made judgments in recent weeks, when there have been long disputes about whether rice should be allowed into Gaza, although pasta is allowed in, or about whether paper should be allowed in. That gives a sense of the scale of the challenge that the international community continues to face. We have been clear and unequivocal that we do not want the misappropriation of any materials and in our condemnation of the continued rocket attacks on the Israeli population, but we have been equally robust in saying that there needs to be full and unfettered access for those items that constitute humanitarian provision.

Hugo Swire: I am slightly surprised to hear the Secretary of State say that when he was in Gaza the head of UNRWA, John Ging, said that supplies were getting through, because that is not what he said to me when I was in Gaza recently, nor what he said to a cross-party group in this very place yesterday afternoon. He did say that UNRWA is unable to go about its business in Gaza because of a lack of armoured vehicles. He also said that UNRWA was chronically underfunded. Given that this country pledged £47 million at the outset of the crisis—very little of which has got into Gaza—will the Secretary of State now show some leadership by talking to the Israelis to insist that UNRWA armoured vehicles get through to Gaza?

Douglas Alexander: The hon. Gentleman is labouring under a misapprehension following my previous answer. The point that I was making about John Ging was that he was clear that the aid that he was supervising was getting through to the people of Gaza who required it and was not being misappropriated by Hamas. Consistent with the position that the British Government have taken, John Ging—speaking on behalf of UNRWA—has very deep concerns about the range of items being allowed through the crossings and into Gaza.
	When I visited Gaza, I took the opportunity to meet Isaac Herzog, the Israeli Social Affairs Minister, and press directly the case about the armoured vehicles and the wide range of items that are not being allowed to enter Gaza. Only as recently as yesterday, those efforts were reinforced by one of my colleague Ministers who made the point again directly to Isaac Herzog. Of course, a new coalition is emerging in Israeli politics. Let us hope that the dialogue that we have begun in recent weeks—although it has not achieved what we would all wish to see—makes more progress in the weeks ahead than it has done so far.

Gregory Campbell: It is essential, of course, that every assistance possible be given to the innocent people in Gaza, but can the Secretary of State assure people in the United Kingdom that that assistance will not be misappropriated by those who caused the problems in Gaza in the first instance?

Douglas Alexander: I have just explained that we use tried and tested mechanisms that provide robust supervision. Oxfam, an organisation with which the hon. Gentleman will be familiar, now distributes drinking water by water tanker to up to 60,000 people every day in the worst-affected parts of Gaza. Since 27 December and the outbreak of the conflict, the World Food Programme has distributed two months of rations to more than 296,000 people in Gaza, and UNRWA, the organisation led by John Ging, is reaching up to 1 million beneficiaries with food assistance. Those are practical examples of the difference that the generosity of the British people and others in the international community is now making to the lives of ordinary Gazans.

Gerald Kaufman: My right hon. Friend personally, and this Government, have a magnificent record in assisting Gaza, but is it not lamentable that the money that he provides simply goes to rectify the wanton devastation inflicted savagely by Israeli forces in Gaza? Does he agree that the real obstacle to reconstructing Gaza is not Hamas, loathsome though it is, but what is about to become the most extremist Government in Israeli history?

Douglas Alexander: We have been unequivocal in our condemnation of the rocket attacks that have continued from Gaza into the Israeli population, but we have been equally clear that the Government of Israel have heavy responsibilities. One of the most dispiriting aspects of my visit to Gaza was sitting with a group of Palestinian business people who told me of their investments in factories in Gaza in recent years—at a cost of being called quislings by the Hamas authorities because they were willing to trade with Israel—and of how, during the final hours of the conflict, ahead of the unilateral declaration of the ceasefire, they watched the devastation of the industrial region of Gaza when there was no apparent activity from Hamas forces in that part of the territory. There is a huge amount of work to be done and it is vital that the humanitarian effort continues, but, beyond the humanitarian effort, it is critical that a comprehensive middle east peace plan emerges in the weeks ahead. I hope and trust that the new Israeli Government under formation at the moment will take that forward.

Mark Lancaster: The Secretary of State will be aware of growing concerns in the NGO community about the apparent contradiction between EU and UK law on whether NGOs can continue to support public officials such as teachers and nurses. Will the Secretary of State offer some clarity and confirm that British NGOs will be able to continue to provide vital services in Gaza without the fear of prosecution under EU law?

Douglas Alexander: The position that the British Government have adopted for some time has not changed. We urge the agencies involved to maintain the greatest possible distance from Hamas. We recognise that there might be circumstances in which there is proximity within Gaza, given Hamas's present role, but none the less we are clear that those mechanisms that I have spoken of already need to be upheld. We need to be able to offer assurances to the British people that the aid to which they have generously contributed is not being misused and misappropriated.

David Winnick: Will the Secretary of State bear in mind in these exchanges that the appalling devastation in Gaza was brought about by Israel? More evidence has come to light in the past few days that Israel has in fact committed war crimes in Gaza—crimes against humanity. Although I have no time for Hamas at all—obviously not—the fact remains that far more should be done by the international community first and foremost to help the people of Gaza and secondly to try to ensure that those who have committed war crimes are brought to justice.

Douglas Alexander: I hope that my answers today have given some comfort to my hon. Friend that we are taking decisive action in providing the humanitarian support for which I know there is widespread support on both sides of the House. We are extremely concerned by the reports of killings of innocent civilians during Operation Cast Lead. The Israeli Government are carrying out an investigation into the allegations, led by Defence Minister Ehud Barak, and he has stated that the findings will be examined seriously. It is important that these investigations are carried out, not least given the severity and seriousness of the charges that are being levelled.

Michael Moore: Two months on from the end of the conflict, as hon. Members have pointed out, the humanitarian situation in Gaza remains absolutely desperate. We all accept that we must take every measure to avoid aid being diverted by Hamas to other ends, but the Secretary of State himself has expressed concerns about the Israeli Government, who are allowing through only about a fifth of the humanitarian assistance that the NGOs and others say they need. Is it not time that the Secretary of State spelled out what steps the Israelis must take to let that assistance in and what will happen if they do not do that? For the sake of the NGOs, will he spell out the difference between legitimate co-ordination with officials in Gaza and illegitimate engagement with Hamas?

Douglas Alexander: I have of course met the NGOs that are working in Gaza. I reiterate at the Dispatch Box today that if they have concerns they can come and talk to us directly in the Department. In relation to the point on the Israelis, the hon. Gentleman is right to recognise that we continue to have deep concerns about the level of access that is being denied—in terms not simply of the quantity of aid, but of the range of products that are being allowed in—and about international aid workers' inability, in certain circumstances, to enter Gaza to offer their expertise in the light of the continuing humanitarian situation. That is why I have raised that issue with the Israeli Government and why, only yesterday, we once again raised it with Isaac Herzog, the Social Affairs Minister.

St. Helena

Anne Snelgrove: When he expects the consultation on options for access to the island of St. Helena to conclude.

Michael Foster: We expect the consultation to start in April and take 16 weeks. The consultation document will set out details of the timetable and of how people can participate. We will run the exercise in line with the Government's code of conduct for holding public consultations.

Anne Snelgrove: As my hon. Friend is aware, Swindon has the largest St. Helena community outside London. What hope can he give my constituents, who are British citizens, that their families will not be left stranded and that the consultation will not delay the introduction of 21st century transport links for that very remote island?

Michael Foster: My hon. Friend is always a keen advocate for her constituents, especially the Saints in Swindon. I reassure her that the consultation document, when it is produced, will make it absolutely clear that we remain fully committed to providing access to St. Helena.

Andrew Mitchell: Is the Minister aware of the view across the House that the Government are guilty of a breach of faith and of dithering in their handling of this matter? What will the new consultation tell him that he does not already know from the past nine years of this process?

Michael Foster: I do not recognise the circumstances that the hon. Gentleman describes. I am not going to prejudge the outcome of the consultation exercise, but I look forward to reading his contribution—and perhaps that of his constituents on the Falcon Lodge estate in Sutton Coldfield, for instance—to see whether they think that it is right, in the current economic circumstances, to spend the amount of money that is being considered on an airport for St. Helena.

Andrew Mitchell: Does the Minister not understand that Ministers' handling of this matter has been shameful, as the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn), the respected former Foreign Office Minister, has eloquently explained? The people of St. Helena are British citizens, so do we not have a duty to them to resolve this issue? Is not it time that he and his colleagues got a grip?

Michael Foster: At a time of global downturn, we are talking about 50 million people around the world being unemployed. An extra 90 million people will earn less than $1.25 a day, and it is expected that an extra 3 million children will die as a result of the global downturn. We have to take all those circumstances into account when making a decision about spending the amount of money that we are talking about on an airport for St. Helena.

PRIME MINISTER

The Prime Minister was asked—

Engagements

Joan Ryan: If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 25 March.

Harriet Harman: I have been asked to reply. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is today in New York, meeting UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon as part of a range of meetings to discuss the world economy, prior to the G20 meeting in London.

Joan Ryan: When I met my constituents in Highway ward on Saturday, they told me that the single biggest issue was their rising fear of burglary. Measures such as the security fund that help people to make their homes more secure are very important and necessary. Will my right hon. and learned Friend give me an assurance that the Government will do all they can, while working closely with the police, to combat that growing fear?

Harriet Harman: The Home Secretary can give that assurance, as do I. Against the background of concern about burglary, I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, North (Joan Ryan) will reassure her constituents that there are more police on the beat and tougher penalties against those who are caught and prosecuted. I know that she supports police community support officers, and she can reassure her constituents that burglary across London has fallen by half.

William Hague: Three weeks ago, I asked the right hon. and learned Lady about the Government's failure to implement the working capital scheme, which is meant to provide loan guarantees to help businesses. She said then that the scheme was being finalised. The scheme has received state-aid clearance from the EU, and the Government said that it would be up and running from 1 March. Is it not unacceptable that it is still not up and running, and that still no loans have been guaranteed under it?

Harriet Harman: As the right hon. Gentleman said, we now have state-aid approval for that working capital scheme, and I can tell the House that, under the agreement with Lloyds and the Royal Bank of Scotland, £5 billion will now be released to business. The tax payment deferrals, which give businesses direct cash help through deferring their tax payments, have meant help for 93 businesses all around the country— [ Interruption. ]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Let the Leader of the House reply.

Harriet Harman: If the Opposition had their way, it would not even be 93 businesses, but under our programme it is 93,000 businesses. We are taking action to give direct support to businesses and to families, and to back up the economy in the face of an unprecedented global financial crisis.

William Hague: More than 2 million people are now unemployed in this country, and thousands of businesses have gone under. The job recruitment scheme announced in January has been delayed until April. The mortgage support scheme is also not up and running. This is a matter of cross-party concern. The hon. Member for Coventry, North-West (Mr. Robinson)—he knows a lot about loan guarantees—said on the radio this morning:
	"We have always been behind the game...As far as industry is concerned we don't have those schemes working yet."
	Does the right hon. and learned Lady not agree with her hon. Friend, with all his Treasury experience, that the Government are still behind the game?

Harriet Harman: The right hon. Gentleman is wrong about the job recruitment scheme. We said that the extra help for people who have been unemployed for six months would come in from April this year and it is on target. There would be more unemployed if there were the cuts in capital that the Tories propose. It would be more difficult for the unemployed if there were cuts in jobcentres. The reality is that we are putting money into the economy, with a fiscal stimulus for money direct to businesses and to families, whereas the Opposition would take no action and make the recession worse and longer.

William Hague: My party called for a national loan guarantee scheme all the way back in November and the Government have dithered about it ever since. They are all over the place. The Prime Minister is on his way to Chile. The Business Secretary has just arrived in Brazil. Should he not be implementing those schemes instead of unpacking his Speedos on a Latin American beach? Is it not time to get on with those things?
	On the fiscal stimulus, yesterday the Governor of the Bank of England warned against another significant round of fiscal expansion when the deficit is already as big as it is. This morning, the gilt auction has apparently failed for the first time in many years. Was the Governor of the Bank of England not right to give that warning?

Harriet Harman: As far as the gilts are concerned, the head of the Debt Management Office has said it would be wrong to read anything into the result of one auction. He says that
	"the amount of debt we are raising is sustainable."
	The Opposition's proposal for a loan guarantee scheme would not have guaranteed anything to anyone because there was no money behind it. On the action we are taking in the face of an unprecedented global financial crisis, in November, in the pre-Budget report, we said we would have a fiscal stimulus to help with investment in housing, in transport and in apprenticeships. That is what the country needed. The country needed it and the Governor of the Bank of England backed it—only the Tories opposed it.

William Hague: I now notice that the Government are too ashamed of the VAT cut to mention it in the list of what they did last November. Let us be absolutely clear about what the Governor of the Bank of England said yesterday:
	"I think the fiscal position in the UK is not one where we could...engage in another significant round of fiscal expansion."
	For a Governor of the Bank of England to speak in that way, ahead of a Budget, is exceptional and extraordinary, especially when the Prime Minister was in the very act of proclaiming a fiscal stimulus before the European Parliament. It is a defining moment in the debate in this country about how to deal with the recession. Today, the right hon. and learned Lady speaks for the whole Government and the Chancellor is sitting alongside her. Do they agree with the Governor of the Bank of England? Yes or no?

Harriet Harman: I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that it is a defining time, because whereas we take the necessary action, the Conservatives would do nothing. It is a defining time because this weekend, they decided to press ahead with their plans for tax cuts for just 3,000 millionaires. At the same time, they preach financial rectitude.
	The right hon. Gentleman said that I had missed out the VAT cut; well, I am sorry, and I will rectify that. I will mention the VAT cut, which will put £275 into the budget of every family in this country. I will also mention the help for pensioners that started in January this year. I will mention the help with extra child tax credit. The big, defining dividing line is that we want to make sure that we give help to 22 million families with tax cuts, whereas the Conservatives' priority is to give £200,000 each in tax cuts to just 3,000 millionaires.

William Hague: The question was about the Governor of the Bank of England. I know that inheritance may preoccupy the niece of the Countess of Longford, but it is no good attacking our policy, which is to reward people who have saved hard and worked hard all their life, and which, when we announced it, the Government tried to copy. Let us be very clear what the Governor of the Bank of England said:
	"I think the fiscal position in the UK is not one where we could...engage in another significant round of fiscal expansion".
	The question to the Leader of the House today is whether she agrees with the Governor of the Bank of England—yes or no?

Harriet Harman: The Budget will be on 22 April. The Governor of the Bank of England agreed with us when he said that our fiscal stimulus was "perfectly reasonable and appropriate". When it comes to fiscal measures, how can the right hon. Gentleman justify £2 billion of public money being squandered on 3,000 of the richest people in this country? That is unfairness and irresponsibility.

William Hague: The CBI said this week of the British economy that
	"a further significant fiscal stimulus is unaffordable".
	The ITEM Club said that
	"there is really very little room for manoeuvre".
	The chief executive of the Audit Commission said that we are facing an "Armageddon scenario" because of the "scale of indebtedness". The Governor of the Bank of England said the words that I have now read out twice to the right hon. and learned Lady—that this country cannot afford another substantial, significant fiscal stimulus. May I give her, in my last question, a third opportunity to agree with the Governor of the Bank of England? Otherwise, the nation will rightly conclude that the Government are now in open disagreement with the Bank of England, and are no longer in control of either the public finances or the policies of this country. Yes or no—does she agree with him?

Harriet Harman: This country will rightly conclude that while the Tories say that they have changed their ways, they have not. I want to make it quite clear that while we are investing—we will continue to invest—they call for cuts. When our Prime Minister is working with world leaders, they drift off to Europe's far right. While we are giving tax cuts to millions of people, they would give tax cuts only to millionaires. They have set out their stall: it is the millionaire's manifesto.

Hon. Members: More, more!

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Sally Keeble: Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware of the predictions of a serious increase in youth unemployment this summer? Does she therefore agree with the independent member of the Monetary Policy Committee and others, who think that there should be a strong fiscal stimulus specifically targeted at ensuring that young people can get jobs this summer?

Harriet Harman: The extra investment of £2 billion in our jobcentres will particularly help young people. We have made more investment in training, and a central part of the fiscal stimulus is more investment in apprenticeships. I fully support the points that my hon. Friend makes.

Vincent Cable: Yesterday we had a very British coup d'état when the Governor of the Bank of England sent his tanks down the Mall, effectively seized control of the British economy through his command of monetary policy, and put the Government under house arrest. If the Prime Minister still thinks it is worth his while returning from a sunny exile in south America, what freedom of manoeuvre do he and the Government have in respect of taxation and public spending?

Harriet Harman: I know the hon. Gentleman understands that it is important that we work internationally as well as taking action in this country. It is important that every Government in the world support their economy so world trade can get going again. I know that he agrees with that, so I do not know why he decries the international action that the Prime Minister is taking. With reference to the Bank of England, it was this Government who made the Bank of England independent as to its interest rates.

Vincent Cable: I think this discussion is about what the Government do at home, as well as what they do abroad. Would it not be sensible for the Government to concentrate now on taxing and spending more efficiently and fairly, to withdraw the pointless cut in value added tax, using the money to focus it on targeted investment in affordable housing and public transport, and to provide a tax cut for people on low pay, paid for—fully financed—by people who are very wealthy and who, under this Government, have enjoyed extraordinary tax reliefs, allowances and tax avoidance opportunities?

Harriet Harman: The VAT cut was one of a range of measures and it is only temporary, for one year. We agree with the hon. Gentleman about the importance of investing in housing and public transport. We agree with him, too, that when it comes to bringing the public finances back into balance, it must be done fairly. Those who can afford most should contribute most. That is why we propose a new top rate of tax of 45 per cent. on income over £150,000. I hope that he will support it, even if the Tories will give support only with tax cuts for millionaires.

Liz Blackman: MRSA and C. difficile rates are falling significantly at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, Derby Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Ilkeston community hospital, all of which serve my constituents. Is this not down to the hard work of NHS professionals, coupled with the targeted investment put in by the Government? Will my right hon. and learned Friend take the opportunity to congratulate all involved?

Harriet Harman: I will. I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health has led that, and has led the NHS team in making that a target so that patients in hospital know that they can be safe. That is a result not only of the extra investment, but of the hard work from cleaners through to nurses, doctors and all the teams in the hospitals. I agree with my hon. Friend.

Lembit �pik: A new European Commission report shows that despite prohibition, the illegal drugs trade is thriving, creating what United Nations drugs director, Antonio Maria Costa, calls a staggering criminal market, destabilising health policies and entire countries. Will the Leader of the House convey my request to meet the Prime Minister to propose a comprehensive impact assessment of current drugs policy, so that we can start tackling this crisis in an evidence-based way?

Harriet Harman: I will pass on the hon. Gentleman's request for a meeting with the Prime Minister, who I know will agree that we need to provide all the support we can to those who have become addicted to drugs, and crack down hard on the dealers and traffickers.

Andrew Dismore: Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware of Conservative Barnet council's scheme to cut entirely the warden service for its sheltered tenants? This is causing considerable fear and anxiety among [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is allowed to be heard. [Hon. Members: Reading.] Order. Let me decide. If he is doing anything wrong, I will decide.

Andrew Dismore: The Conservative council's plan to cut the warden service is causing considerable fear and anxiety among many elderly and vulnerable people in my constituency, who rely on the wardens not just for safety, security and reassurance, but for the small things that make life worth living

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman has been here long enough to know that a supplementary should not be read. Perhaps he could put the note down and ad lib.

Andrew Dismore: Will my right hon. and learned Friend raise the matter with the leadership of Barnet council? Does she agree that it is a case of same old Tories, same old cuts?

Harriet Harman: That is why we will defend public investment and public services, and make sure that the economy can be put back on the path to growth so that we can protect people in this country, such as my hon. Friend's older constituents.

Bill Wiggin: Will the Leader of the House help save 225 jobs at Polytec Holden in Bromyard? The company makes components for car manufacturers, and the Royal Bank of Scotland, which has had 45 billion of taxpayers' money, will not lend it money to tool up. Will the right hon. and learned Lady arrange a meeting between my constituents and the noble Lord Mandelson, so that we can co-ordinate funding from a state-owned bank to a state-sponsored car industry?

Harriet Harman: I will arrange a meeting between the hon. Gentleman and his constituents and the Business Secretary. We are determined to make sure that we help those who are working hard in important British industries such as the automotive industry.

Angus Robertson: President Obama's economic fiscal stimulus package is worth $787 billion, and more than half that is being spent at state level. In contrast, in the UK the Labour Government, supported by the Conservatives, are cutting devolved public spending by 1 billion in Scotland, by 500 million in Wales and by more than 200 million in Northern Ireland. How can that be sensible or socially just?

Harriet Harman: We are not cutting investment in Scotland and Walesfar from it. But we are sayingand I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would agree with thisthat at a time when public spending is tight, we need to make sure that every single penny of it is wisely spent.

Julian Brazier: Yesterday, the Government announced their national security strategy. After the 7/7 bombings, the then Prime Minister made it clear that his highest single priority was the deportation of foreign terror suspects from this country. Can the right hon. and learned Lady tell the House how many foreign terror suspects have been deported?

Harriet Harman: My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has said that we have excluded 150, and we are absolutely clear that we will take action to deport those who are a threat to national security. I am sure that we are all in total agreement on that point.

Tony Lloyd: Suppose that the Government were to seek advice from either side of the House about the gross unfairness of bunging a few rich people tax cuts while the majority saw tax increases; that is what would happen if the Tories' inheritance tax proposals went ahead. Would my right hon. and learned Friend prefer the advice of the shadow Business Secretary before or after he was muzzled?

Harriet Harman: The shadow shadow Chancellor gave his right hon. Friends the opportunity to find their way out of the decision that they had made, and they unwisely chose to ignore it. What are people to make of a party that opposes tax cuts for 22 million people and, instead, chooses to squander 2 billion of scarce public money on the super-rich?

Philip Dunne: The Armed Forces Pay Review Body submitted its report to the Prime Minister on 29 January. Why should our personnel serving in the field still have no idea whether they will get any pay rise by Wednesday next week? Does the delay reflect more about the Government's attitude towards the armed forces, or is it another example of dithering incompetence?

Harriet Harman: The Government have been unswerving, and rightly so, in our commitment to our armed forces. The Minister of State for Defence will open a full day's debate on the armed services tomorrow, and I am sure that he will address that point.

John McFall: President Obama has written an article today that says that trillions of dollars have been lost in the world economy, banks have stopped lending and tens of millions of people will lose their jobs. Will I get an undertaking that the Prime Minister will work with President Obama to ensure that the message goes out that people and their futures matter in the economy and that this Government will ensure that employment is at the top of the G20 agenda?

Harriet Harman: My right hon. Friend's passion and commitment on this issue shows that he takes the view that we dothat the action that we are taking on the economy is to protect people who otherwise face the threat of losing their jobs or their homes. As for the fiscal stimulus that we have undertaken, this country needs it, and all other countries are now looking to do it: only the Tories oppose it.

Andrew Stunell: Can the right hon. and learned Lady ask the Prime Minister to reassure my constituents that when he recently met the President of the United States, he picked up some tips about getting back ill-gotten bonuses from overpaid bankers? Can she set out for the House the start date for doing so, or, if not, at least the Prime Minister's timetable for beginning to think about it, or if all else fails, his aspirations for a miracle?

Harriet Harman: The Prime Minister has made it absolutely clear that there should be no reward for failure and that he does not want banks taking risks with other people's money. The Financial Services Authority, under Lord Turner, has issued a report on tightening up financial regulation and remuneration policy. We are working internationally on this as part of the G20 agenda. As far as Sir Fred Goodwin is concerned, UK Financial Investments Ltd. is on to it.

William McCrea: Does the right hon. and learned Lady understand that there is considerable anger in Northern Ireland today about the fact that a number of suspects being questioned in relation to the terrorist murders of two young soldiers in my constituency of South Antrim and of police officer Stephen Carroll have been released by order of the court because of technicalities? Will she and the Government assure my constituents that everything will be done to ensure that justice is done and that evil men are taken off the streets of Northern Ireland?

Harriet Harman: I can absolutely assure the hon. Gentleman that that is the situation. We want to ensure that those who have committed this atrocious crime are brought to justice. We support the police and the prosecuting authorities in their work, and we support the peace process.

Michael Clapham: Will my right hon. and learned Friend support the establishment of a national centre for asbestos-related diseases, which would be a virtual centre committed to finding better treatments and a cure?

Harriet Harman: We support the work to carry out research on finding the causes and cures of work-related diseases. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work that he has done in the House of Commons over many years to bring to the House's attention the tragedy of people simply going to work and being made ill by their work. We have put 12 billion extra into our science budget, part of which is for research that will find the treatments and cures that he has asked for.

John Baron: Now that the Information Commissioner has ruled that the Government have been wrong, on several counts, to refuse my request for a list of possible sites for the new Titan prisons, will they now abandon their policy of choosing sites without consulting local residents and publish that list of sites so that local people and stakeholders can have their say? Otherwise, all the rhetoric from the Prime Minister saying that he wants greater transparency in politics will be seen to be nothing more than hot air.

Harriet Harman: The Justice Secretary assures me that there will always be consultation when such developments are being considered. If the hon. Gentleman has a particular concern about his constituency, I am sure that he can meet one of the ministerial team to discuss it.

Mary Creagh: Wakefield metropolitan district council has set up an innovative mortgage assistance scheme which, in the first six months of its operation, has prevented 11 families from becoming homeless. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that more councils should adopt that sort of scheme to show that local government is on people's side during the recession rather than telling them that they are on their own?

Harriet Harman: It is very important that we do not leave people to sink or swim and do not say that the recession should take its course, and that we step in to help people who fear that the loss of their job or a fall in their income might cause the loss of their home. That is why we have put extra investment into the social security budget to enable people to claim help with their mortgage interest after 13 weeks instead of 39 weeks; it is estimated that that has already helped 10,000 people. I am glad to hear that my hon. Friend's local council is working to that effect as well.

Simon Hughes: For every pound spent by Governments around the world on conflict prevention, about 2,000 is spent on military and defence budgets. Can the right hon. and learned Lady give any assurance to the parliamentarians from around the world meeting in London this week to discuss conflict prevention that there will be a greater UK Government commitment to conflict prevention and, in the short-term, to bringing about a resolution in Sri Lanka?

Harriet Harman: The hon. Gentleman is right to draw the attention of the House to the situation in Sri Lanka, which remains grave. The Government are committed to supporting a range of conflict prevention, stabilisation and peacekeeping activity, focusing on countries where the risk of impact of conflict is greatest. We have had an unprecedented increase in our international development budget, part of which was to deal with conflict resolution. Conflict resolution involves international actionnot just this country working alone, but with other countries around the world.

Andrew Gwynne: Some 150 jobs will be lost at the  Manchester Evening News and other Greater Manchester Weekly Newspapers as all the local newspaper offices are closed, and great titles such as the  Tameside Advertiser and  Stockport Express are consolidated in central Manchester. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that local newspapers are the lifeblood of local democracy, and will she join the Greater Manchester MPs in calling on the Guardian Media Group to think again?

Harriet Harman: I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. It is certainly the Government's position that local and regional newspapers, radio and television are important and, as he says, part of the lifeblood of this country. That is why Lord Carter and the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport are working on this important issue, which was raised in a debate in this House last Thursday.

Justine Greening: South Thames college in Wandsworth was advised by the Learning and Skills Council to submit its redevelopment programme in two halves. The first half of that project is complete, but the second half now hangs in the balance. If it is not finished, the students' learning environment will be severely disrupted. Does the Leader of the House agree that it is madness to put such projects on hold, and can she assure South Thames college that it can finish the project that it started?

Harriet Harman: This Government support better further education and more investment in colleges[Hon. Members: We all do.]in my constituency as well as hers. Opposition Members say, We all do. Actually, no. Their policy is to cut funding for it by 600 million. I am sorry, the hon. Lady might not remember this because she was not in the House at the time, but when we came into Government, does she know how much money was in the further education college budget? Precisely zero pounds, and we have increased it by 1 billion. She can leave it to us: we will invest in further education. But if her party got into government, that would be the end of it.

Speaker's Statement

Mr. Speaker: I have looked into the circumstances surrounding the publication of the White Paper on the UK's strategy for countering international terrorism, which were raised by the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr. Blunt) yesterday. I regret that Members were not able to get hold of that document earlier, after it had been laid. In future, I shall require Government Departments to make copies of documents available in the Vote Office as soon as they are formally laid in the Journal Office.

Points of Order

Angus Robertson: A few moments ago, in a question to the Leader of the House, who is leaving the Chamber as I make this point of order, which is unsurprising, I asked about the UK Government's plans for public spending cuts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Those cuts have been discussed by the Prime Minister and the First Ministers of Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland. They are a matter of fact, but the Leader of the House, from the Dispatch Box said, We are not cutting public spending. Only three short weeks ago, in reply to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) regarding the knighthood of Sir Fred Goodwin, the Leader of the House was forced to correct what she said in this Chamber. How can we secure a change, today, on this question?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman must not use points of order to extend Prime Minister's questions, at which the Leader of the House was deputising for the Prime Minister.

Elfyn Llwyd: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: It was not a point of order, so there cannot be any further to it.

Gregory Campbell: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. When can we get clarification of the statement from the Leader of the Houses and of the factual position, as it was outlined to the First Ministers of the three devolved legislatures?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman must seek a debate at some stage in the proceedings.

Elfyn Llwyd: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Much obliged to you. The Labour First Minister in Wales is fighting the 500 million cuts that the Leader of the House denied today. I wonder why he is doing that.

Mr. Speaker: You will have to ask the First Minister. He is a very nice man and I am sure that he will be able to answer you.

Cohabitation

Motion for leave to introduce a Bill (Standing Order No. 23)

Mary Creagh: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide certain protections for persons who live together as a couple or have lived together as a couple; and for connected purposes.
	In the summer of 2006, I met a woman in Wakefield who was homeless. My constituent and her 14-year-old daughter were both sleeping on sofas in the living room of a friend's one-bedroom flat. The woman's long-term relationship had broken down. She had lived with her male partner for many years, brought up their child, and contributed to all household bills. However, when their relationship broke down, my constituent was entitled to nothing from her ex-partner. She moved out of the family home, to which she was unlikely to be entitled to a share unless she could prove to a court that there was a common intention of joint ownership, either by agreement or by financial contribution to the property. The courts could not consider what might be a fair outcome because she was not married. My constituent and her daughter were left destitute. She had discovered, in the hardest possible way, that there is no such thing as common law marriage. The burden of providing for her and her daughter fell on the state and the taxpayer.
	I was delighted to discover at the time that the Law Commission had published a consultation paper on cohabitation in May 2006. It produced its final report in July 2007, which stated:
	The result of the current law's inadequacy is hardship for many cohabitants on separation, and as a consequence, their children... And in many cases relationship breakdown may lead to reliance on the State in the form of claims to welfare benefits and social housing.
	My right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House told the House in October 2006 that legislation would be introduced in 2007 to give new legal rights to the 4 million people who live together. Those rights would also protect their 1.25 million dependent childrenchildren who have no choice about their parents' living arrangements, but suffer devastating hardship on the breakdown of their parents' relationship. The old label for those children was illegitimate. Here and now, in the 21st century, they remain literally illegitimateoutside the law. In March 2009, here we are, still awaiting the Government's proposals.
	The case for reform was and remains clear. It is long overdue. In 2004, the General Synod of the Church of England passed a motion, which reaffirmed the centrality of marriage but also
	recognises that there are issues of hardship and vulnerability for people whose relationships are not based on marriage which need to be addressed by the creation of new legal rights.
	There is an appetite for this Bill in both Houses, and the measure is largely based on the Law Commission's 2007 report. The wise, noble and learned Lord Lester of Herne Hill introduced the Bill in the other place on 13 March. It is supported by Resolution, an association of 5,500 family lawyers. Before publishing it, there was a public consultation, with nearly 200 responses from: the Law Society of England and Wales; the family division of the High Court; the Family Law Bar Association; Families Need Fathers; Refuge, and many other solicitors, academics and individuals. Lord Lester has placed their responses in the Lords Library.
	There is also an appetite for the Bill throughout the country. The 2008 British social attitudes survey stated that nearly nine out of 10 people think that a cohabiting partner should have some financial provision if the relationship has been long term and involves children.
	Our society has a duty to protect children, whatever family circumstances they find themselves in, but the law as it stands leaves children in poverty when their cohabiting parents' relationship ends. Today, one in three babies are born outside marriage, compared with just one in 20 in 1963, and 44 per cent. of all children in England and Wales are born to unmarried partners. The proportion of unmarried women who cohabited with a partner trebled between 1979 and 2002, but without a claim on the family home, the mother, who is usually the children's main carer, becomes homeless. If we are serious about our pledge to end child poverty in this country in the next 10 years, the Bill will have a huge part to play.
	However, we need to be clear. The Bill does not give cohabitants the same legal protections as marriage does. Marriage and civil partnership are special and offer specific protections and benefits. The Bill would create a legal framework that applies only on the breakdown of a cohabiting relationship. It may even remove the incentive to cohabit in order to avoid the financial costs of a divorce, which many people do now. The Bill would also allow couples to opt out of those protections to maintain their freedom of choice as individuals.
	People meet, they fall in love and they move in together. They may decide not to get married for a variety of reasons. There may be the romantic ideal of true love, and who are we in this place to argue with that? There is the ideological objection to the institution of marriage. People may have left an unhappy marriage and be reluctant to embark on another marriage, whether happy or unhappy, or they may have witnessed their parents' unhappy marriage and decided, for whatever reason, that marriage is not for them. People may feel too young or be too career minded, or they may be just trying things out with the other person. But they all have one thing in common: rare is the couple who consult a lawyer before they take the step of moving in together.
	There is, I have discovered, what sociologists call optimism bias, whereby people believe that their love will last for everand in some cases, of course, it does. However, it is not surprising that people who are not lawyers should be ignorant of the law or that they may know the law, but allow inertia to creep in. However, the harsh reality is that men and women, whether gay or straight, who live together without a marriage or civil partnership can face devastating poverty and homelessness when their relationship ends.
	The Bill would also provide protection for Muslim women who may be married in a religious ceremony abroad, live with their husband in this country for many years and, on the breakdown of the marriage, discover that they were never legally married in this country and that they have no rights whatever.
	In July 2007, the Ministry of Justice concluded in its research paper on its Living together campaign that
	There is a need for a presumptive scheme giving cohabitants (and particularly cohabitants with children) automatic rights and obligations...This is particularly important for those in uneven relationships or where one partner is less committed than the other.
	The Department also pressed for a more consistent message from the Government and policy makers on the non-existence of common-law marriage, saying:
	Currently, the contrast between the acknowledgement of cohabitation in welfare support systems and the lack of acknowledgement of it in family law is contributing to general confusion about the legal position of cohabitants.
	The Department for Work and Pensions recognises cohabitation when establishing people's benefit claims. It takes into account the duration of the relationship, the performance of household duties and the degree of mutual commitment. Yet when one partner dies, the cohabitant has no right to a bereavement grant, as they are not treated as the other's next of kin. Currently, therefore, cohabitants have all the responsibilities but none of the rights that marriage bestows. Other Commonwealth countries, including Australia, New Zealand and Canada, give protections to cohabiting couples without detriment to marriage.
	The law as it stands is unfair, uncertain and illogical. It penalises the vulnerable and, in particular, the children of cohabitants. The law does not recognise the choices that people make in the 21st century and it does not promote equality of outcomes for families. The Bill is long overdue, humane and compassionate. It promotes fairness social justice and equality before the law, and I commend it to the House.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Ordered,
	That Mary Creagh, Hilary Armstrong, Liz Blackman, Natascha Engel, Ms Sally Keeble, Fiona Mactaggart, Lynda Waltho, Mr. Andy Slaughter, Dr. Evan Harris, John Bercow and Mr. Gordon Marsden present the Bill.
	Mary Creagh accordingly presented the Bill.
	 Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 3 July  and  to be printed (Bill 81)

Opposition Day
	  
	[9th Allotted Day]

Iraq War Inquiry

Mr. Speaker: I inform the House that in both debates, I have selected the amendments in the name of the Prime Minister.

William Hague: I beg to move,
	That this House welcomes the Prime Minister's announcement of 18 December 2008 that a fundamental change in the British forces' mission in Iraq will occur by 31 May 2009 at the latest and that at that point the rapid withdrawal of the British troops will take place, taking the total from just under 4,100 to under 400 by 31 July 2009; notes that following this announcement there remains no reasonable impediment to announcing an inquiry on the war in Iraq; and calls for such an inquiry to be conducted by an independent committee of privy counsellors, and to review the way in which the responsibilities of Government were discharged in relation to Iraq, and all matters relevant thereto, in the period leading up to military action in that country in March 2003 and its aftermath, and to make recommendations on lessons to be drawn for the future.
	This is the third time in this Parliament that I have proposed this motionor something very similar to itand it is the fourth time that the House has debated the need for a full-scale and wide-ranging inquiry into the origins and conduct of the war in Iraq. It will come as no surprise to anyone that with the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq now imminent and the political and security situation in that country substantially improved in recent times, we are once again returning to this issue a year to the day since we last did so and six years this week since the start of the conflict.
	Although it is therefore now a familiar topic for the House, the content of our debate today may be somewhat different from that in previous years, for we are now approaching a new situation in which Government arguments against an inquiry, which have grown steadily thinner as these debates have gone by, have now all but evaporated. In previous years, we made the argument that an inquiry should be commenced irrespective of the circumstances prevailing at the time, but now even those circumstances no longer provide the excuse for not commencing it.
	This is not to say that we have been wasting our breath entirely in previous debates, for in each debate the common ground in the House has grown larger as the arguments against an inquiry have been diminished by the passage of time. It is now common ground, I think, that the events surrounding the Iraq war have been so important in shaping world affairs in recent years, made such an impact on the lives of millions, involved our armed forces in such effort and sacrifice, been so fraught with accusations of mistakes made and planning inadequately done and become so relevant to what is happening elsewhere in Afghanistan or to what might happen in other places in the future that it would be inconceivable to turn our minds for ever against inquiring into those events and trying to learn from them.

Angus MacNeil: The right hon. Gentleman refers to the passage of time. He will, of course, be aware that the passage of time since March 2003 is equivalent to or greater than that of world war two.

William Hague: That is absolutely right, and it is a point that I have made in at least one of the previous debates, and the hon. Gentleman may have made it, too. Yes, it is now six years since the start of the conflict, which is longer than the duration of the entire second world war.
	Faced with enormity of these issues and the extent of public expectation that an inquiry will be held, the Government have long since given up the argument that no inquiry may be necessary at all, although it was their starting point in 2006, when this series of debates begana debate that was launched by the nationalist parties. At that time, the right hon. Member for Derby, South (Margaret Beckett), who was Foreign Secretary, was very careful not to commit the Government to an inquiry at all, saying that
	this is not the time for making these decisions.
	She also said:
	Unlike at the time of the Falklands war we now have a framework of Select Committees that carry out independent inquiries.[ Official Report, 31 October 2006; Vol. 451, c. 172.]
	True enough, that careful stonewalling was breached within minutes of the end of that debate by the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Des Browne), who was Secretary of State for Defence. He went out to St. Stephen's entrance and said:
	When the time is right, of course there will be such an inquiry.
	Government sources then said that he had made a slip of the tongue. However, it was not many months16 May 2007before the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), showing early on in the Labour party's deputy leadership election the skill that she is now employing in the leadership manoeuvring, said:
	I think that when the troops do finally come home, which we all hope will be as soon as possible, there will need to be an inquiry and I think that we also need to look at the circumstances in which we went in but at the planning and preparation for the aftermath as well, and we will need to learn lessons from that.
	By the time that we returned to the issue on the Floor of the House in June 2007, ministerial resistance to the idea that an inquiry might be necessary had totally collapsed.

Stewart Jackson: Does my right hon. Friend, like me, deprecate the evidence prayed in aid in the Government amendment that it would be improper to have an inquiry while our troops are in the field, given that historical precedent shows that, for example, in 1940 the Norway campaign was the subject of a full parliamentary debate in the House, and indeed precipitated the downfall of the then Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain?

William Hague: Yes, my hon. Friend makes one important analogy, which is very attractive to us as it involves the downfall of a Prime Minister. Come to think of it, that idea is probably quite attractive to the Foreign Secretary. There are closer analogies, which I will come to in a moment.
	I was going back two years to June 2007 and the Government's arguments of that time. Their claim that four separate inquiries had already taken place, therefore obviating the need for any further inquiry, met ridicule in this Chamber and outside it, given that one of those was the Hutton inquiry into the death of Dr. David Kelly, another was the Butler report on the use of intelligence and the other two were deliberations by Select Committees, at least one of which had complained loudly that it had little access to information and no co-operation from the Government.
	When Ministers were brought back to the Dispatch Box that June, they had themselves occupied a new defensive position, now insisting that there would of course be an inquiry at the appropriate time, but that to commence it there and then would, in the words of the former Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Derby, South, send a message of disunity and possibly
	convey to others
	the much wider
	impression that this country's commitment to Iraq is weakening.
	That was a bogus argument, but it was a new bogus argument and therefore quite interesting on those grounds. The idea that a militiaman in a Baghdad suburb would be emboldened by the news that the British Government were trying to learn from mistakeswhen he could already have read about adverse opinion polls, huge demonstrations and serious divisions among western nations at the UN Security Council as plentiful examples of disunitydid not constitute a serious argument.

John Redwood: Did my right hon. Friend note that, at the beginning of the debate, there were only eight Labour MPs present not on the Front Bench, including the Parliamentary Private Secretary? Does that show that Labour MPs are ashamed of their Government's position? Does the absence of the Leader of the House show that she is ashamed of the position and wishes that the Government would change it?

William Hague: I do not think that those on the Government Benches now take enormous pride in the Government's position. Indeed, the variants on this motion that I have tabled in recent years were defeated only by quite narrow majorities, given the balance of parties in the House. I am sure that a huge number of Labour Members want an inquiry to commence, and commence now, as I shall come to argue.
	To be fair to the then Foreign Secretary, in 2007, she made the further and more substantial argument that
	while our troops remained actively engaged and facing real danger in Iraq, it would be wrong to launch such an inquiry.[ Official Report, 11 June 2007; Vol. 461 c. 539-45.]
	Many of us in the House have never agreed with that line of argument. Those of us who talk regularly to members of our armed forces, as I do at Catterick garrison in my constituency, have formed a clear view that most of them would welcome an inquiry at any time, since they, above all, are the people who have had to wrestle with the consequences of mistakes that have been made and are extremely interested in ensuring that such mistakes are not repeated. Their morale would be raised, rather than lowered, by knowing that an appropriate inquiry was going on.
	There is the further consideration that in an extended conflictas the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr. MacNeil) said, the Iraq war has gone on for longer than either of the world wars of the 20th centurywaiting for the end of all hostilities before learning from any mistakes is a grievous error. Our predecessors in the House launched an inquiry into the Dardanelles campaign while the first world war was raging, and indeed into events in Mesopotamia in 1916 while military operations continued there. Nevertheless, that was an argument until, in the course of last year, our troops were no longer actively engaged on a daily or large-scale basis.
	At that point, the Government's defence against starting an inquiry changed again and was redefined on 10 December last year by the current Foreign Secretary, who said that
	we do support an inquiry into the origins of the Iraq war, when our troops are safely home.
	So, the mantra that an inquiry could not begin while our troops remained actively engaged has turned out not to represent the real reason the Government would not set up an inquiry in recent years; it was simply one of a number of excuses, and its ceasing to be relevant has led them to abandon it in favour of another, much weaker excuse.
	Even now, it seems that the Government have to be dragged slowly to the course of action that they know is right and inevitable. The Foreign Secretary said, also on 10 December:
	We are not going to hide behind the idea that the last troop must have come home.[ Official Report, 10 December 2008; Vol. 485, c. 565-6.]
	but given their record of steady retreats from one excuse to another, it would not now be surprising if they tried to hide behind that.

Malcolm Rifkind: Is not my right hon. Friend's point reinforced by the wording that the Government have chosen for their amendment, which talks not about the return of our troops, but says that it would be inappropriate to have an inquiry
	whilst important operations are underway in Iraq to support the people and government of Iraq.?
	As it is the Government's intention to help the people in government in Iraq over the next few years, does that not imply that the Government have, yet again, changed their criteria and are grasping anything they can to prevent having any inquiry at all?

William Hague: As usual, my right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely on the nail. I have pointed out how the Government have retreated from one argument to another. It may be the next stage of the retreat to argue that an inquiry cannot begin even when the troops are safely home, but I think that the Government know that they are in the last stages of their retreatperhaps it is the last stageon this matter.
	The Government have started to indicate that some kind of inquiry may be established later this year, but rather fittingly for a Prime Minister who said that he would end the culture of spin and treat Parliament with greater seriousness than his predecessor, the suggestion that they will hold an inquiry has been made not to Parliament, but to the  News of the World on Sunday.
	It was reported on Sunday:
	Gordon Brown is set to order an inquiry into the war in Iraq, the News of the World can reveal. Senior sources
	this is the end of the culture of spin
	at the Ministry of Defence suspect the review will be announced
	 [Interruption.] I used to write an excellent column in the  News of the World, but the Prime Minister of the nation is meant to announce things to Parliament, not in a column in the  News of the World.
	The  News of the World continued:
	Senior sources at the Ministry of Defence suspect the review will be announced in Mr. Brown's speech to the Labour Party conference this autumn.
	This reviewnotice it will be a review rather than an inquirywill, said the paper,
	have access to intelligence used to justify the invasion and records of the Cabinet's discussions before the war. It is also expected to review the Army's performance in the invasion and its aftermath.
	This is a small classic in trying to use spin to wrong-foot the intentions of Members of Parliament, suggesting that the matter is all in hand while already seeking to water down what an inquiry would look at, and indeed whether it would be an inquiry at all.
	If Ministers think that they will get away with a review, which looks at the decisions made before the war and the performance of the Army, they have another think coming. When somebody as senior as Sir Hilary Synnott, the diplomat who was put in charge of governing southern Iraq, says in his book [Interruption.] I did refer to that book last year. Sir Hilary Synnott was so pleased that I did so, I thought that I would please him by referring to it again, because this part of the argument remains the same:
	Hardly any Whitehall departments got involved with Iraq. There was none of the mobilising of the government machinewith cabinet committees, ministers and individuals nominated to deal with specific tasks, and taskforcessuch as happened during the second world war...Instead, there was an ad hoc cabinet committee, where both chairmanship and participants changed.
	When someone like that presents such an argument, it is clearly vital for a real inquiry to be able to look at the functioning of Government across the board, and to do so in the period after the invasion of Iraq as well as before it.

Several hon. Members: rose

William Hague: I shall sweep across the Chamber, starting with my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin).

Bernard Jenkin: I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend. Is not the point that he is making particularly relevant to the conduct of Government policy in Afghanistan? It is being conducted by a Cabinet Committee that meets once a fortnight, rather than the whole Government being engaged in the effort.

William Hague: What I am saying may be relevant to that. We do not know what an inquiry will say. However, I think that there are grounds for concern about the way in which Government have made important decisions about national security in recent years. Certainly, it appears from recent deliberations about Afghanistan that several different reviews are in progress in Whitehall at one timesome within different Departments, some between officials of Departments, and some between Ministers, including the Foreign Secretaryrather than the issue being looked at as a coherent whole. That may well be one of the lessons to be learned for the future.

Tobias Ellwood: Will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating 7th Armoured Brigade, who did a fantastic job in moving into Basra during the invasion and creating a relative peace? What happened then was that they looked over their shoulders expecting some form of stabilisation and reconstruction plan, and there was none to be seen. Is not the reason we require an inquiry the fact that other Departments, especially the Department for International Development, were not there in strength to support the good work that our military had done?

William Hague: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is a reason for an inquiry. It appears from what has been said and written about the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq that the Department for International Development was indeed not ready to follow up what other Government agencies, and the Army, had achieved, and that it had been decided at the highest ministerial level that it would not co-operate in the planning for the aftermath.

John Barrett: The right hon. Gentleman said that the  News of the World had mentioned the possibility of an inquiry. Does he recollect some of the news headlines at the time, which set the mood of the nation in the run-up to the war? The Sun carried the headline Brits 45 mins from doom, while another newspaper carried the headline Ready to Attack: 45 Minutes from a Chemical War. What is in a newspaper can set the mood of the nation. The mood has changed, however, and I think that therefore people need the inquiry.

William Hague: Of course the mood has changed. The circumstances have moved on in six years. But I think that people who opposed the war in Iraq, of whom I imagine the hon. Gentleman was one, and people who supported itall those peoplewant to make sure that we have learnt from whatever mistakes are made. That is why there is such common ground on this issue.

Anne McIntosh: I am enjoying my right hon. Friend's speech very much. Does he agree that the contribution made by north Yorkshire has been exceptional? Will he argue that we should broaden what the motion says about the aftermath to include those who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and the way in which they are being dealt with in the north of England, where there is no treatment available?

William Hague: Of course that should be looked at as well. Because we both represent constituents in north Yorkshire, my hon. Friend and I are extremely conscious of the role of our armed forces and the circumstances in which they work. Perhaps that should be examined even more urgently than, and separately from, the conduct of the war in Iraq.

Angus MacNeil: rose

William Hague: I shall give way one more time, and then proceed with my speech.

Angus MacNeil: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way again.
	Further to the point made by the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (John Barrett), I imagine that if the headlines had said the exact opposite of what the Government wanted them to say, the Government would have got up and countered them.
	When the right hon. Gentleman quoted from a book to which he had also referred in a debate last year, the mirth on the Government Benches betrayed the Government's attitude. They hope that the passage of time will lessen the need for and the consequences of an inquiry. The reality is, however, that the inquiry is needed not just for the past and not just for the present, but as much for the future, to prevent such errors from happening again and, importantly, to prevent other countries from acting in the same way.

Mr. Speaker: Order. An intervention should not be a speech.

William Hague: I think that we got the point, Mr. Speaker. Yes, of course that supports the case for an inquiryand yes, there was a bit of mirth on the Government Benches, but many of the arguments for an inquiry do remain the same. One of the points I am making is that it is the Government's arguments that have changed. They have become steadily thinner over time, and now they are very thin indeed.
	An inquiry should be at Privy Council level, and should be able to study how relations with our key ally were managed; the use of intelligence; the functioning of the machinery of Government; why poor decisions were made in some cases, and dissenting opinions were overlooked; why expectations of what would happen in Iraq turned out to be wrong; why the insurgency was not anticipated; and whyin the words of Jonathan Powell, the Prime Minister's chief of staff at the time
	There was planning, but it was planning for completely the wrong thing.
	It should also study our success or otherwise at nation-building. It should examine the way in which the Department for International Development, the Foreign Office and the armed forces work alongside each other. That point has already been made by many of my hon. Friends.
	It begins to look as if Ministers have it in mind to set up an inquiry that would perhaps be more limited than most Members of the House and the vast majority of people in the country would wish. Moreoverimportantlyit looks as if they want to set it up at such a time that its proceedings could reasonably be concluded only after the latest date for the next general election, after they can be held accountable for the results. There is no other explanation for their behaviour, since there is no reason on earth why an inquiry of the necessary wide-ranging kind cannot be established now.
	I have put before the House in previous years arguments that grow stronger with the passage of time. I have argued that memories will be weaker, and relevant documents more likely to have been dispersed, with each year that goes by, particularly as some of the events and decisions to be inquired into took place as long ago as 2002. The Foreign Secretary has tried to deride that argument in the past, but the idea that the recollection of Ministers and officials remains perfect, however many years go by, is not credible. It suggests that they have powers of retention and memory that would have to be superhuman.
	Even when an inquiry is announced, it will doubtless take some weeks or months to assemble its members, to recruit its staff, to prepare its programme of work, to identify where it must seek relevant material, to create a timetable for evidence-taking, and so on. If Ministers really wanted an inquiry once our troops were no longer actively engaged, they would have announced one already, but even if we accept that they want to have one when the troops are safely home, the fact remains that there would be nothing to stop them nominating the inquiry, giving it its powers, and starting it on its preparatory work now, so that the taking of its evidence could begin this summer.
	Last time we debated this subject, the Foreign Secretary said:
	The Franks inquiry was set up after the end of the Falklands conflict...only after all the troops had come home from the Falklands.[ Official Report, 25 March 2008; Vol. 474, c. 56.]
	It may have escaped the Foreign Secretary's attention, but at no time have all the troops come home from the Falklands. There is still a detachment of troops there now. When Baroness Thatcher first announced the inquiry to the House on 8 July 1982, there were far more British troops deployed in the Falkands than there are in Iraq today, along with many warships.
	The Prime Minister has already announcedon 18 Decemberthat a fundamental change of mission will take place by 31 May at the latest, and that by 31 July only 400 British troops will be left in Iraq, the majority of them dedicated to naval training. In any case, our legal authority to be in Iraq expires at the end of July. The timetable for withdrawal has therefore already been set. The UN mandate by which we were in Iraq in recent years has, of course, already expired. Our troops are no longer engaged in combat activity. The statement by the Iraqi defence spokesman on 31 December made it clear that the agreement superseding the UN mandate stipulated
	that they will not be engaged in combat activity, and that their activities will be exclusively confined to the purposes of training and support.
	The head of the Army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, said at Christmas:
	We have now concluded the operation, or are about to conclude the operation, in Iraq, on the basis that the job is done.
	When we take all those facts together, we can see that no substantial argument remains against the immediate announcement and rapid establishment of the inquiry that the nation demands. If it is necessary to have an inquiry, as Ministers have accepted, there is no longer any reason linked to the safety of our troops to delay one, and every reason of scrutiny, accountability and learning for the future to begin one as soon as we can. The only remaining explanation for the non-appearance of an inquiry is either ministerial self-interest in delaying its onset and therefore its outcome, or a reluctance to get around to it at all.

Adam Price: rose

William Hague: I will give way for the last time.

Adam Price: The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about the need for an inquiry now. Does he agree that it is important that the accountability of that inquiry runs to Parliament and not to the Executive, given that Parliament was, in my view, given misleading information in the past? I remember the former Prime Minister saying, If only you could see some of the things that come across my desk, you would vote for the war. If only we had seen them, because then more hon. Members would have voted against.

William Hague: I think that it is important for it to be a Privy Council inquiry because the results would be laid before Parliament. The hon. Gentleman and I have had a small difference on this matter in the past, in that he originally proposed a reinforced and special Committee of this House. That would suffer the disadvantages that its membership would comprise only Members of this House, and that it would probably have to have a governing party majority, so it would not be the independent inquiry that I am advocating, able to draw on the expertise of people from outside Parliament. I do not think this needs to be an inquiry conducted in Parliament, but its results need to be laid before Parliament.

Edward Leigh: Will my right hon. Friend give way on that point?

John Baron: rose

William Hague: I had not intended to give way again as I am trying to get on with my speech, but I shall give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh).

Edward Leigh: Does my right hon. Friend share my sadness at the fact that we need a full Falklands-type inquiry because our Select Committees are so weak? Under the Osmotherly rules, we cannot insist on particular officials appearing before a Committee and we cannot look at advice given to Ministers. Our Select Committees are therefore not strong enough, unlike congressional committees.

William Hague: I agree, and my hon. Friend has expressed that point very well.

John Baron: Does my right hon. Friend also agree that we need an inquiry because since even the Hutton inquiry a wealth of material and information has come out by way of freedom of information requests and other means, which clearly show that the intelligence reports were misrepresented and mispresented by the Government at the time? For example, we have only recently discovered that there was a body called the coalition information centre, a propaganda unit within the Foreign Office; it has since disbanded, but that body played a key role in the drafting of the dossier.

William Hague: My hon. Friend makes a powerful point, and he has been instrumental in making sure that some of these documents come to public attention. It is when we take together the mixture of freedom of information items that have come out into the public domainas well as freedom of information decisions that have been overturned by the Justice Secretary in respect of Cabinet minutesand all the memoirs and other statements that have been written by so many people, that we see that it is important to look at these matters in the round, and for an inquiry to be able to consider them together.
	I shall now sum up.

Gordon Prentice: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

William Hague: I must finish my argument, I think.  [Interruption.] Well, due to public demand, I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman.

Gordon Prentice: The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the Dardenelles. Given the comments made by very senior members of the military, does he believe there is a case for an admiral or a general to serve on the inquiry?

William Hague: Yes, I think there probably is a good case for that. Provided that they are respected for independent judgment, their being able to bring military expertise would be a very valuable asset. That is all for consideration, however, and what we should be deciding today is that such an inquiry should be established.
	I repeat today that if no inquiry is established by the time of the next general election, one of the first acts of a new Government will be to establish one. Additionally, I wish to make it clear to the Foreign Secretary that if an inquiry is established that is merely a review, or that has inadequate scope and powers to carry out the necessary tasks, and it is still continuing its work beyond the next general election, an incoming Conservative Government will reserve the right to widen its scope and increase its powers as may be necessary. Ministers may delay in an effort to reduce the force and relevance of what they know must come, but in the end we will learn the necessary lessons, and we will learn from what went wrong in the functioning of the machinery of government itself.
	There is an utter determination in most quarters of this House that we will get to the heart of these matters and that the processes and functioning of governmentand maybe of Parliamentwill be improved as a result. It can only be to the discredit of current Ministers that they have no wish to see such learning and improvement commence, even though they have now run out of reasons for that not to commence. The House of Commons would be doing them a favour if it pushed them today into the right, necessary and complete course of action, and it would be doing what is right for this country as well.

David Miliband: I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from House to the end of the Question and add:
	notes the Resolutions of this House of 31 October 2006, 11 June 2007 and 25 March 2008 on an Iraq inquiry; recognises the heroic efforts of the British armed forces in Iraq who have a continuing role which this House should be careful not to undermine; further recognises that a time will come when an inquiry is appropriate, but declines to make a proposal for a further inquiry at this time, whilst important operations are underway in Iraq to support the people and government of Iraq.
	I have recently had the privilege of meeting some of our troops and their commanders in Basra. Their dedication to duty, their commitment and comradeship and, above all, their immense bravery should be an inspiration to us all, and is a credit to the country. Whatever the divisions of this debate, nothing shouldor will, I am suredivide us from saluting them together for the way in which they have carried out their tasks in Iraq.
	This Government amendment makes the same point as the Government amendment that the House supported at this time last year. The reason is simple: the situation in Iraq has changed, in the main for the better, since the debate last yearI will set that outbut the number of British troops, and their role and position, has not changed. Until it does, the case for caution against declaring mission accomplished and turning our attention to an inquiry remains strong.

Edward Leigh: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

David Miliband: No. I will do so in a few moments.
	In important respects the work of our troops carries dangers, especiallyI say this although it is paradoxicalas the date for the completion of their work comes closer. One civilian was killed at the Basra airbase in a rocket attack earlier this month, so the sole focus of Government activity at this timeacross the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign Office and the Department for International Developmentis to secure the most smooth and effective conclusion to the bulk of British military engagement in Iraq, and the most smooth and effective increase in British economic, political, educational and cultural engagement in Iraq.

Several hon. Members: rose

David Miliband: I will be very happy to give way in a moment, after I have set out my argument.
	The Government amendment says clearly and unambiguously that there should be an inquiry. The reason is simple: there are important lessons that could be learned. Indeed, as the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) pointed out last year and has repeated in his speech, Iraq has involved British troops for a longer period than world war two. Every country is unique, and the Iraq experience of post-conflict reconstruction is important. We all know that building the peace in Iraq has been much more difficult than winning the war. The debates about de-Ba'athification and the disbandment of the Iraqi army have been well aired and it is right that they are looked over again.

Michael Fabricant: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

David Miliband: No. I said I will give way in a few moments, after I have set out my argument.
	The time to focus on an official inquiry is when the troops come home to safety, not when they are still exposed to danger in Iraq. Precedent supports this, and so does common sense. For the avoidance of doubt, I was asked on 10 December if that meant every troop coming home, and I gave a very clear answer: we are talking about combat troops, not every troop, and I will set out the timetable again in a moment.
	I am now very happy to take interventions from all those Members who sought to speak, but I shall give way first to the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh).

Edward Leigh: I am grateful to the Foreign Secretary for giving way. Will he give a commitment today that we will set up this inquiry as soon as practicable after 31 July? That is a given, is it?

David Miliband: Yes.

Tobias Ellwood: The Foreign Secretary seems to be living in a parallel world in terms of what is actually happening with our troops at Basra airport. They are not going out on patrols, and they are not involved in operations in Basra. They are bunkered up at the airport itself. They are doing some work with the Iraqi army, but in fact they are busy handing over not to the Iraqis, but to the Americans. Will he spell out exactly what he is trying to justify by saying in his amendment that we are involved in operations when we are not?

David Miliband: I am afraid that that is just not correct, and I am happy to go through why it is not correct. One obvious reason is that they are providing not simply training, but mentoring for Iraqi troops which by definition involves more than going outside

Tobias Ellwood: In the airport.

David Miliband: No, it involves more than that. I will give some further detail, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Armed Forces will do so, too.

James Gray: The Foreign Secretary said a moment ago that the precedent is for the inquiry to be established after all the troopsor the vast bulk of themhave been withdrawn, rather than, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) suggested, the initial steps being taken before they are withdrawn. Would the Foreign Secretary care to tell us of one occasion on which that precedent occurred?

David Miliband: The Falklands is the obvious example because the

Tobias Ellwood: We killed that one off.

David Miliband: No, the hon. Gentleman has not killed that one off, with respect. British troops will remain in Iraq after 31 July if all goes according to plan, but they will not be combat troops. In the case of the Falklands, the enemy had surrendered, so by definition the troops were no longer in danger in the Falklands when the inquiry was set up in July 1982.

Mike Hancock: I am sure that the whole House shares the Foreign Secretary's admiration for those who have served and are serving in Iraq. He very much admires their courage, so why are the Government not showing the same courage and saying We have nothing to hide, we are not hiding behind anything and we agree to this inquiry? Why are they not being as courageous as our soldiers have been?

David Miliband: I do not think that any Foreign Secretary should come to this place claiming that he is being as brave as the people who are serving in our armed forces around the worldI certainly do not make that claim, and I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman reduces the argument to that point. The Government have taken a very consistent position since the debate last year and we will take it again in the debate this year. The right time for an inquiry is when our combat troops have come home, and I am happy to detail why the situation in Iraq requires that.

Malcolm Rifkind: The Foreign Secretary said in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) that an inquiry would be announced after 31 July. He will, of course, be conscious of the fact that that will be about a week after this House rises for the summer recess. Will he therefore give an assurance today that a statement will be made to the House before it rises for the summer recess confirming that the inquiry is to go ahead? If he is not prepared to give that assurance, will he explain why not, given that we know that 31 July is the decisive date?

David Miliband: The former Foreign Secretary should know better; the idea that we decided on a troop withdrawal plan and chose 31 July as the date for its conclusion because Parliament will not be sitting at that time is, frankly, risible.  [Interruption.] We will do this after British combat troops have been withdrawn, and that is the right thing to do.  [Interruption.] That has been the position that we have set out over the past year, and I believe that it is the right position to hold. It has nothing to do with the Labour party conference; it is a simple position that the Government have articulated again and again and again.

Malcolm Rifkind: The Foreign Secretary will know that I made no reference to the Labour party conference. I simply said that he had confirmed that the combat troops would be back by 31 July, so there would no longer be an obstacle to announcing a statement. He must know that an inquiry of this importance ought to be announced to the House of Commons. There cannot possibly be any objection to announcing on, shall we say, 20 July10 days or so before 31 July, when the House is still sittingthat the inquiry is to be established and what the terms of reference will be. He must appreciate that if he declines to give that assurance, it would appear either that he is going to make that statement when the House is not even sittingthat would be a disgraceor that he is looking for an excuse to leave it until the autumn, thereby delaying the time by which the inquiry would ultimately report. He must realise the suspicion and deal with it now if he is to command the respect of the House.

David Miliband: I am sorry that the right hon. and learned Gentleman puts it in that way. We have been completely clear, in last year's debate and in this year's debate, about the Government's position on this point. Our position is that once combat troops come home is the right time to establish an inquiry. We will establish that inquiry with the full respect for Parliament and all of its Members, for precedent and for the need for the inquiry to look into both the conduct of the war and the conduct of the peace-building afterwardsthat is precisely the sort of comprehensive look that the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks, who speaks for the Opposition

David Heath: rose

David Miliband: After I make some progress I shall be happy to bring in further hon. Members.
	The UK has a strategic national interest in a strong, stable, non-hostile Iraq, confident in its territorial integrity and acting in accordance with international law. As the first majority Shi'a democracy in the Arab world, it can help to bridge the Sunni-Shi'a divide in the middle east. As one of the traditional places of Shi'a authority in the world, with a track record of a humane tradition, a revived Najaf can offer an alternative to the radical Shi'ism expounded by some in Iran. It is important, therefore, to recognise the progress that has been made in Iraq since our debate last year. The change from the savage conflict of three years ago is remarkable, and the progress is to be welcomed. It brings withdrawal closer and, for the purposes of this debate, it brings an inquiry closer, because, at every stage the key for us has not been dates; it has been what our troops are doing in Iraq.

Adam Holloway: rose

David Miliband: I shall make some progress and try to bring in the hon. Gentleman a bit later.
	Thanks to the brave work and dedication of our troops and their coalition partners, as well as the improved capacity and commitment of the Iraqi security forces, the number of security incidents across the country is down to its lowest level since 2003. The provincial elections held on 31 January passed without major incident and included the Sunni parties and Sunni voters. Although key pieces of legislation are still outstanding, in the past year the Iraqi Parliament has agreed new laws on investment, de-Ba'athification, detainees and the powers of provincial government.
	Although that progress is significant, anyone who has spent any time in Iraq will say that in some parts of the country the security situation is still fragile and reversible. The threat from extremist groupsthat seems to be dismissed by the Conservative partyas well as from militias and terrorists, remains. Roadside bombs and suicide attacks are still a danger to the lives of ordinary Iraqis. Attacks this month in Mosul, at a Baghdad police academy and at a market in Babil remind us of the enduring dangers posed by terrorism in Iraq.
	Although progress has been made in politics, compromise is painfully slow and, as in the rest of the world, the global economic downturn is having an impact in Iraq. So, after the loss of many thousands of lives, including 179 British defence personnel, and the spending of billions of dollars, Iraq needs careful and deliberate international support as it moves to be fully in command of its own affairs.

David Heath: Will the Foreign Secretary give way?

David Miliband: No, I just want to make a bit of progress.
	That is why some 4,100 British troops are deployed in southern Iraqthat is more or less the same number as were there this time last year. As agreed with the Government of Iraq, they still have a number of tasks to complete. Their work to mentor and train the 14th division of the Iraqi army is ongoing. The Royal Navy continues to patrol the Gulf area and to contribute to the defence of Iraqi territorial waters and oil platforms, and the Royal Air Force provides vital support, both to UK troops and as part of the coalition air effort. Each of those tasks is vital in order to ensure that Iraq continues the progress of recent years.
	We are now, however, approaching a key moment in the timetable for the draw-down of British troops. In July last year, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister set out how UK troops would move carefully and deliberately, guided by the situation on the ground, from a lead role to an overwatch role. Next week, on 31 March, the first step will be taken, with the absorption of Multi-National Division (South-East) within Multi-National Division (South). This is not the replacement of British commanders by Americans, but a new coalition force structure reflecting the changes going on in Iraq and with a larger geographical responsibility. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister told the House,
	the fundamental change of mission ... will take place by 31 May 2009 at the latest. At that point, we will begin a rapid withdrawal of our troops, taking the total from just under 4,100 to under 400 by 31 July.[ Official Report, 18 December 2008; Vol. 485, c. 1234.]
	The Government of Iraq have indicated that they want the UK to continue to provide military training and education. We are offering to provide support to officer training through the NATO training mission in Iraq, and to supplement that with attendance at staff and other training. We are also discussing with the Iraqi authorities how we can best meet their ongoing requirements for maritime support and naval training. Our plan, which has been agreed by the Government of Iraq, is to withdraw combat troops by the end of July. As we draw down our military engagement, we will step up our effort to support and rebuild the Iraqi economy and to help Iraqis ensure that their critical infrastructure works. Of course, our diplomatic relationship will remain essential, and we will maintain both a substantive embassy in Baghdad, and missions in Basra and Irbil.

Several hon. Members: rose

David Miliband: I shall give way after I have finished this paragraph. The planning for the safe withdrawal of most of our troops, and the development of a plan for the role and position of the remainder, is being undertaken with great care in the Ministry of Defence. The Foreign Office is orchestrating, week by week, the realignment of Britain's relationship with Iraq as military forces are reduced. The Department for International Development is continuing to work to help the Government of Iraq to deliver services to their people and to be in a position to take advantage of the strong interest of international investors. I said that I would give way to the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Holloway), so I shall now do so.

Adam Holloway: Does the Foreign Secretary accept that there are lessons to be learned from Iraq and that there are mistakes that we are repeating? Is it not a shame that even the MOD has binned its internal critique of the conduct of our operations in Iraq?

David Miliband: I am always wary of the attempt to put Iraq and Afghanistan in the same paragraph, as I believe they are fundamentally different theatres. However, there are important lessons from the Iraq experience. As I will say in a moment, the MOD has carried out significant internal reviews, as well as having the benefit of external reviews, as has the Foreign Office, and those are fed in week by week. The hon. Gentleman may well have important points about the way in which strategy and tactics are being put into practice. We should certainly be learning the lessons, but that does not require us to wait for the full-scale official inquiry that we are debating today.

Mike Gapes: Yesterday, I met a delegation of Iraqi Members of Parliament, representing all the diverse communities in that country, and they wanted a message sent to the British people to say, Thank you for what you've done to get rid of Saddam Hussein and please keep supporting us in our transition to democracy.
	Will the Foreign Secretary ensure that the inquiry, when it happens, is not narrowly focused, but looks at the totality of the UK relationship with Iraq before, during and since the conflict, and includes the complicity of the Conservative Government of Baroness Thatcher with Saddam's regime during the Iran-Iraq war?

David Miliband: I hear what my hon. Friend says about the need for the inquiry to look beyond the immediate context of the war, and especially at the conduct of the peace-building.

Bob Spink: I sincerely thank the Foreign Secretary for recognising in his speech and in the Government amendment the professionalism and bravery of our troops, which the Opposition failed to do in their motion. Will he confirm that any inquiry will not reveal the identity of any individual member of the troops so that nobody is put at risk?

David Miliband: One advantage of a Franks-style inquiry, as recommended by the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks, is that it would operate in private and could preserve the confidentiality that is important for all our troops.

Jeremy Corbyn: The Foreign Secretary has conceded that an inquiry will take place. Will he assure the House that all the papers prepared for the Cabinet before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 will be revealed to that inquiry so they may be properly studied, unlike the decision that was taken to challenge the Information Commissioner's decision that they should be released to the public?

David Miliband: There will certainly be full co-operation with the inquiry, including in respect of the important papers that my hon. Friend mentions.

Edward Davey: The Foreign Secretary mentioned the operations of the British forces in Iraq. Can he say how many personnel, based in Iraq, London or elsewhere, would be involved in any inquiry? What would be the problem with replacing those people so that they were free to engage in an inquiry now?

David Miliband: I have not mapped that out, but it would be a substantial number. In the Foreign Office, it would involve people who are working in our Iraq unit at present who are resolutely focused on this delicate passage of time. As British troops withdraw, we have to make it clear to the people of Basra that we are not abandoning Iraq, but are continuing to remain engaged with it. I am happy to confirm that substantial effort will be dedicated to an inquiry. It would be important for the Government to co-operate fully with it across Departments.
	I do not accept that development and planning have been compromised by the absence of an inquiry. There have already been four inquiries into aspects of the war in Iraq, although they were not official inquiries with access to all the papers. In 2003, both the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Intelligence and Security Committee, and then a year later the Butler inquiry, examined the decision to invade Iraq, focusing on the accuracy and adequacy of the intelligence, and of course the Hutton inquiry looked into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr. David Kelly.
	Our military, diplomatic and development strategies have consistently been adjusted and updated in the light of events and those inquiries, and in the light of reviews that we have undertaken inside the Government. Some of them have been made public, but others, for obvious reasons, have not. For instance, the Ministry of Defence carries out regular reviews of operations from the strategic to the tactical level. Its reviews have made recommendations on matters ranging from the military kit to counter-insurgency strategy or the relationship of security to economic and political change. DFID's approach in Basra has evolved significantly over time, from the initial priority of focusing on the dilapidated infrastructurework that has benefited more than 1 million Iraqisto a focus on developing Iraqi economic capacity.
	Of course our experiences in both Afghanistan and Iraq have had a significant impact on the workings of the Foreign Office, with greater emphasis on cross-departmental planning and working, including through the tri-departmental stabilisation unit. More resource is being devoted to post-conflict planning and delivery as well as the development of a much smarter approach to risk management. The accumulation of internal lessons learned over the past six years, as well as internal reviews conducted, is all material that an inquiry could draw on.
	I was interested to hear the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks say last year that he favoured an inquiry along the lines of the Franks inquiry, which he referred to as the model inquiry. The Franks inquiry was set up after the end of the Falklands conflict. The fact that it was conducted in private meant that it had access to all the relevant papers. In that respect, it was significantly different from the US Baker-Hamilton report. Franks was not a judicial inquiry so it did not require its witnesses to have lawyers. There were no leaks or interim findings to distract from the final conclusions and recommendations.
	Of course, it is important to remember that Franks looked only at the run-up to the Falklands war in the wake of Lord Carrington's resignation. Most discussion of the case for an inquiry into Iraq has not favoured limiting an inquiry to the lead up to the war, but is instead more interested in the conduct of the war and its aftermath. The Government have never demurred from that view.

Peter Soulsby: Can the Foreign Secretary give an assurance to the House that when an inquiry is eventually held, it will not be confined just to the conduct of the war and events afterwards, but will focusas part of its terms of referenceon that very important period of the run-up to the war and what was told to this House and the nation, which was clearly less than the whole truth about the nature of the so-called threat and our potential response to it?

David Miliband: I have been very careful not to start placing limits on what an inquiry could look at. The purpose of the inquiry will be to learn lessons. I do not see any point in repeating what other inquiries have done, but it should be a comprehensive look at the planning and conduct of the war, as well as the peace-building afterwards.

Several hon. Members: rose

David Miliband: In deference to the seniority of the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell) I shall give way, but it will have to be the last intervention.

Peter Tapsell: Does the Foreign Secretary understand that the main interest of the country will be in the run-up to the war, because it is widely believed that in the summer of 2002 the then Prime Minister, Mr. Blair, and President Bush entered into a conspiracy to invade Iraq and spent the succeeding months until March 2003 manipulating public opinion, falsifying the intelligence information and deceiving the leaders of the Conservative party? That is one of the most shameful episodes in British history, if it is proved to be trueas a proper inquiry would prove.

David Miliband: I do not accept that caricature of the period before 2003. Nor do I accept that the vast bulk of interest is in the run-up to the war. For those with conspiracy theories, that may be their interest, but those of us concerned with British operations in the future are interested in the lessons of the war itself and the peace-building effort afterwards. It is important to emphasise the post-war aspects as well as the wartime conduct.

Keith Simpson: Can the Foreign Secretary explain why our major ally, the US, continues to examine and review the lead up to the war and the lessons to be learned, and to do so in public? It is not a bogus argument; it is a fact. Many Americans are amazed that we do not do the same.

David Miliband: That is a bogus argument. As I have just said, the Baker-Hamilton inquiry did not have access to the sort of secret papers that everyone in this House believes that an official inquiry should have access to. Although it is correct that America is a country that conducts numerous internal reviewsas we do, tooAmerica has not had the sort of official inquiry that the hon. Gentleman's party is asking for.
	Iraq was a source of great division in this Housewithin parties and between themas well as in the country. Those divisions will not be erased; nor, above all, will the loss suffered by the bereaved families of our troops lost in action; nor, indeed, will the loss of Iraqi lives. We can never pay tribute to them often enough.
	The future of Iraq should engage us all, whatever position we took on the war, because peace and security in Iraq is not only vital to regional stability but critical to the UK's interests on human rights, counter-terrorism and energy security. Once our armed contribution has concluded and our combat troops have returned home, we should invest the time and effort to learn thoroughly any further lessons. For now, all the efforts of our professional and experienced stafffrom our soldiers to our diplomats and aid workersneed to be focused on creating the best possible transition from a predominantly military relationship to a predominantly economic, diplomatic and cultural relationship with Iraq. That is what the Government will be doing and I believe that it is what the House should be doing, too.

Edward Davey: The right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) forensically showed how the Government's position on an inquiry has evolved over time. I hope to add to his analysis by showing that each of their arguments along the way was bogus. I have decided that that is the right approach, given the speech that we have just heard from the Foreign Secretary, who was still unable to make any strong argument for delaying the inquiry.
	Indeed, in last year's debate on the subject the Foreign Secretary set out all the arguments for an early inquiry and then proceeded to try to demolish them, in much the same way as Tony Blair set out the arguments against going to war with Iraq and tried to demolish them in that famous debate. Both attempts were flawed, although it is interesting to note that Tony Blair and the Foreign Secretary used different debating tactics.
	In seeking to undermine our case against the Iraq war, Tony Blair adopted the Aunt Sally approach. He never dealt with the precise arguments against the war, but instead tackled inexact interpretations and caricatures of those arguments, whether they were on the legal position, the option of letting UN weapons inspectors continue or warnings that war would simply create a worse problem. He got away with it, of course, primarily because the vast majority of Conservatives were taken in by the dodgy dossier and the dodgy arguments.
	To be fair to the Foreign Secretary, he did not take that Aunt Sally approach last year. If one re-reads his speech in  Hansard, one sees that he took the arguments head on. The problem was that he utterly failed to make his case. He got away with it that time because Labour MPs who had previously bravely voted against the war could not bear to support a motion tabled by an unrepentant Conservative party. I feel increasingly sorry for the Foreign Secretary as he has to defend the impossible legacy of his right hon. Friends, yet such sentiments cannot get in the way of our scrutiny of his position.
	Let us remind ourselves just how spectacularly bad the Foreign Secretary was in the debate on this subject last year. He said that there were four arguments for an early inquiry: precedent; the alleged limited activities of our troops, which meant that an inquiry would not get in the way; the need to learn lessons; and the fact that memories will fade.
	On precedent, there was an interesting history debate, spanning the Dardanelles in 1915, the Norway campaign in the second world war and the Falklands. We have heard those arguments again today. However, it was the Conservative hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson) who took out the Foreign Secretary's middle stump with his reference to the inquiry set up into the ill-fated Anglo-Indian campaign of 1916 in Mesopotamia, which we of course know as Iraq. I can now see why the hon. Gentleman is in charge of summer holiday reading lists for Conservative MPs; he certainly sent the Foreign Secretary packing.
	The Foreign Secretary then tried to demolish the second argument for an inquiry, which was that our troops' role in Iraq has for some time been rather limited, so an inquiry could not possibly prejudice their position. The Foreign Secretary thought he was on stronger groundafter all, the current Prime Minister's main argument is that nothing should divert us from restoring stability in Iraq. To make his case, the Foreign Secretary listed the training, monitoring and mentoring role of our troops and their work in their overwatch role, as he has done today.
	Under fire, the Foreign Secretary simply ran away. He failed totally to answer any of the counter-argumentsput from both sides of the Houseto his specious arguments. The hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) asked which British army commanders had advised that an inquiry would undermine our troops. The answer was, None. The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) noted that very few of the forces stationed in Basra would be needed for the inquiry, given that few, if any, of them would have been involved in the political decision making or indeed the invasion and its immediate aftermath. That killer point was totally ignored then and has been totally ignored today.
	When I asked the daft wee laddie question about exactly how our troops' operations would be hindered by an inquiry, the Foreign Secretary failed to enter the cut and thrust of the debate. Even today, when I pressed him on the same point, he was unable to be in any way precise about the impact of an inquiry on operations in practice.

David Heath: I am very glad that my hon. Friend is laying out the specious nature of the argument that nothing must distract the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Ministry of Defence from their essential tasks in Iraq. Does he believe, as I do, that the fact that when our troops come home from Iraq they will almost certainly be redeployed to a conflict in Afghanistan makes that argument particularly absurd? If we are not focused on Afghanistan, what on earth do we have these Departments for?

Edward Davey: My hon. Friend has strengthened my argument. The argument that an inquiry would somehow get in the way of the operations of our troops, the Ministry of Defence or DFID would apply equally to the fact that we have operations ongoing in Afghanistan. Indeed, those operations are far more serious than those under way in Iraq. My hon. Friend makes a powerful point and the Government have no answer to it.

Angus MacNeil: The hon. Gentleman may be aware that five years ago, another of the United States' very junior parties carried out an independent inquiry, in February 2004, into the pre-Iraq intelligence and the threat of weapons of mass destruction. That inquiry felt that that evidence may have been overstated. It also felt that the conservative Government in Australia were more measured than their alliance partners, who had not always accurately portrayed the intelligence that they had received. Which of the alliance partners does the hon. Gentleman think the Australian Government may have been thinking about?

Edward Davey: I think the whole House knows the answer to the hon. Gentleman's question.
	Let me return to the Foreign Secretary and his rather inadequate performance last year. Having failed to deal with the argument that an early inquiry would get in the way of our troops' operations, he then said we did not need an inquiry to learn any lessons because, somehow, miraculouslyin a way that everyone else had clearly missedthe lessons had already been learned. According to the Foreign Secretary, there had been two studies by the Ministry of Defence of the operations in Iraq. There had been internal reviews. The Foreign Secretary said with a straight face that the civil service and armed forces continually adjusted and updated their strategies in the light of experience. I am not joking. That argument was served up to us a year ago by the Foreign Secretary. He was effectively saying that although the Government supported an inquiry at some stage in the future, that inquiry would not be about learning lessons because they had already been learned. That was an astonishing argument to make and showed how weak the Government's position is.

Adam Holloway: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that our troops would probably greatly appreciate an inquiry that might at last address the deep structural problems in the so-called comprehensive approach?

Edward Davey: I think they would. I am not so sure whether that would fit in with this particular inquiry, as I shall discuss later. We need to be careful about the remit of the Iraq inquiry. The hon. Gentleman makes an important point and the Liberal Democrats are very much in favour of a strategic defence review that might deal with some of the points to which he alluded.
	The Foreign Secretary tried to deal with the fourth argument for an early inquiry, which was that memories might fade and records be lost. We heard that argument once again today from the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks. Last year, the Foreign Secretary started well, pointing out that much had already been produced for the previous four inquiries. He conceded that these inquiries had been narrow and limited, but the implication was that they had helped to conserve the information and gather it together so that it would be ready for the full inquiry. I would almost give him half a point for that exchange. Since then, we have had revelations through freedom of information requests of documents that it would seem Hutton definitely could not have seenand that Butler either did not see, or failed to focus on.
	As the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks reminded us, it is indisputable that, with the passage of time, memories fade and people die. So the Foreign Secretary did not even win his strongest position. In other words, in opposing the case for an early inquiry last year12 months agothe Foreign Secretary failed.
	Yet here we are a year later, and the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary are still playing for time. However, we need to be careful and look at what they said, and in that regard the intervention from the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) had the Foreign Secretary on the ropes. The Government's position is that there will be an inquiry when the combat troops have returned, but there is no precision about when it would be set up at that point. Indeed,  Hansard shows that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary said that the case for an inquiry would be considered when the troops had returned. There is no specific timetable: the Government are still wriggling about their position, and that is simply not acceptable.
	The case for setting up an inquiry immediately, with no more time wasted, is, in our view, watertight. It has been so for a long time, yet the Government's continued resistance invites the question, If not now, then when?
	The logic of the Government's position, which was again drawn out by the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks, is that the inquiry should be announced now and begin on or around 31 July, when the troops are supposed to be coming home. My hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Nick Harvey) pressed the Foreign Secretary on the timing of the inquiry during the Queen's Speech debate on foreign affairs. He asked whether it would have to wait until every last man was out of Iraq, and the right hon. Gentleman's response was absolutely clear. Indeed, he was as precise as any member of the Government has ever been about the matter when, on 10 December last year, he said:
	No...We are not going to hide behind the idea that the last troop must have come home. We have always made it clear that our commitment is in respect of combat troops[ Official Report, 10 December 2008; Vol. 485, c. 566.]
	To be fair to him, the Foreign Secretary repeated that today.
	As the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks set out, even the lame excuses of last year can have no force now. On the face of it, if we are to have faith in anything that the Government say, they must announce the inquiry before the summer recess, at the very latest. If they do not, it couldand it certainly shouldhave serious implications.
	Already, the Secretary of State for Justice, the former Foreign Secretary, has vetoed a decision by the Information Tribunal and blocked the publication of the minutes of the key Cabinet meetings. He has been judge and jury in his own trial, and that makes it look as though the Government were guilty of covering something up. However, if the Government fail even to set up the inquiry that they have promised, then the charge that the Prime Minister and others have something more sinister to hide will become very toxic.
	Let us assume for a moment that even No. 10 now knows that further prevarication is impossible. When the Government eventually get around to setting up the inquiry, questions will arise about its nature. The Conservatives today proposed the Privy Council approach, along the lines of the Franks inquiry, and that has some attractions, with the greatest being that such an inquiry would be able to receive top secret material and ensure access to all papers and persons.
	Yet that approach has one big disadvantagethat it would meet, as I understand it, in private all the time. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Clegg) has argued, one of the purposes of an inquiry is to restore the public's trust and confidence. That demands an inquiry in the open.
	So what should the Government do? Well believe that a Privy Council approach is better than a judicial inquiry in this case. The key questions and the key judgments that will have to be made are essentially political, not legaland, above all, we do not want a repeat of Hutton. I can see no reason why a Privy Council inquiry could not hold many of its meetings in public, as long as clear rules were established from the start for when it goes into session in camera.
	There is huge experience now in the courts and other tribunals about managing the balance between public and private hearings. Not least with the new procedures for dealing with terrorist cases, there is up-to-date and recent experience in a variety of procedures about how to strike the balance in different ways. So when the Government eventually announce the inquiry, we will want to know how it proposes to strike that balance. We believe that the inquiry must lean as much as possible towards total openness and transparency.

Andrew MacKinlay: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for letting me intervene; I would have to go to the Foreign Affairs Committee to deal with similar matters. What troubles me is that, whatever the nature of the inquiry, the oath must be administered to those who give evidence. Not only would that make it clear to witnesses that they must tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but it would afford them some protection from Departments and agencies that might lean on them to be less than frank. The process will remain seriously flawed until people are compelled to tell the whole truth, with the possibility of committing perjury if they do not.

Edward Davey: The hon. Gentleman makes a very strong point, and I hope that Ministers will impose that requirement when the inquiry is eventually announced. When that happens, of course, we will want to hear about the inquiry's remit. Although there would be no point in an inquiry that did not have a wide remit to investigate all aspects of the matterfrom the decision to go to war to the pre-planning for post-conflict, as well as the invasion itself and its aftermathit is surely a matter of debate as to exactly what the focus of an inquiry should be.
	The inquiry could, for example, be focused on military tactics, decisions, equipment and so on. Although we believe it is essential that we find more and better ways of protecting our troops in conflicts, and of caring and supporting them and their families both during and after those conflicts, we emphatically do not think that this inquiry should be about the military.
	Our armed forces were fantastic. They should have the support of all sides of this House, and it should be made crystal clear that an inquiry will not focus, to any large extent, on the role of the military. Yes, we need evidence from those who have served, especially the commanders, but the primary objective must be to probe the political rather than the military decision making. For it is British politics that will be under the spotlight. That light will focus on the former Prime Minister, of course, but also on his key advisers and members of the Cabinet and the civil service. Parliament will also be examined, including the role of Opposition parties and individual MPs.
	Whether one agreed with the Iraq war back in 2003or whether, with the benefit of hindsight, one agrees with it now, or thinks that today's world is safer as a result no one can doubt its historic significance, heavy costs and implications for the future. What went right with the political process over Iraq, and what went wrong, could not be more significant. It is to those questions that the inquiry must be directed.

Gregory Campbell: The hon. Gentleman is coming to a very important point in his speech. Does he agree that one of the crucial aspects of any inquiry is that the entire nation, and our magnificent serving soldiers, need to know that the rationale behind any future conflict is defensible, justifiable and durable for the future?

Edward Davey: I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman.
	Let me be clear, however. I am not suggesting that the inquiry's remit should be over-prescribedtempting though that might be, and even more so if Liberal Democrats were alone able to write it. However, its remit must be flexible enough to try to get the truth behind the many unanswered questions and serious allegations. They include, for instance, the question of how and why the Attorney-General's legal advice changed, and how and why the expert intelligence was abused and politicised in No. 10.
	For the sake of brevity, let me give just one example of the questions the inquiry must be able to tackle. This question goes to the heart of the legal and political case made for war, and it is one that could have massive implications in the future. I am referring to the issue of how close Iraq was to manufacturing nuclear weapons.
	Much attention has focused on the notorious 45-minute claim, yet there has been much less publicity over what seems to me to be the critical question of the validityand, indeed, the veracityof the claims made by Tony Blair, in the dossier and in Parliament, that Saddam Hussein was between one and two years away from producing a nuclear weapon.
	Understanding how that assessment was made could be critical for future policy, given the huge and pressing problem of Iran's nuclear capabilities. People often talk about the parallels with Afghanistan, and the lessons that can be learned for that conflict, but the parallels and lessons in respect of Iran are at least as important. So if there is one question that I think it essential for the inquiry to consider, it is this nuclear question.
	It is also essential that the inquiry look at that question for the reason that it was fundamental to the case made by Tony Blair for going to war. The evidence, as far as we have it today, is extremely damaging for him. If one pieces together the various drafts of the dossier as we now have them, and reads them in the light of the memos and emails that have been obtainedmainly through the assiduous freedom of information requests made by the superb investigative journalist, Chris Amesit becomes clear that there was a concerted and politically driven effort to alter the assessments made by Britain's intelligence experts.
	The Butler inquiry revealed some of that information; it showed that the Joint Intelligence Committee's last major assessment of nuclear capability was that
	it would take at least five years to produce a nuclear weapon.
	There was a rider that the
	timescale would shorten if fissile material was obtained from abroad,
	yet no serious evidenceeven in the dodgy dossierwas advanced for that. Instead, in just three days, the at least five years time scale was more than halved, with no evidence.
	Butler questions that, but makes no attempt to explain it. There is no attempt to apportion responsibility despite the centrality of the issue. An inquiry must provide an explanation. Was it, as some of the recently published memos suggest, because the Americans had changed their assessment? Between the publication of the two key dossier drafts, in a speech made on 12 September, George Bush claimed that Iraq would have nuclear weapons within a year. Was it the request made by a senior Cabinet official, Desmond Bowen, in an e-mail to John Scarlett of 11 September to reduce or remove any caveats or hedged judgments? Whatever the answer, we need to know how such deceptions can be prevented in the future, and the inquiry's remit must be wide enough to enable that to happen.

John Baron: The hon. Gentleman rightly pinpoints one example, but he will accept that there have been many others since the Hutton inquiry, born of FOI requests that raised further questions about how intelligence was misrepresented. Does he not believe that that leads us to the view, as revealed in a leaked Cabinet Office memo of 21 July 2002, that the Prime Minister and President Bush had already decided to go to war, but that one of the conditions was that public opinion in the UK had to be prepared during the lead-up? That was the importance of the dodgy dossier.

Edward Davey: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I could list a series of other allegations, slightly less well evidenced than the nuclear one, that Parliament and the British public were misled.

Mike Hancock: Does my hon. Friend believe it is important for the inquiry to consider the fact that the then Chief of the Defence Staff, Lord Boyce, would have resigned had legal justification for the war not been presented to him? That would have put the Government in a very embarrassing position. One of the reasons the legal opinion was changed was to satisfy the head of the armed forces and give him a firm assurance that there was legality for the operation.

Edward Davey: My hon. Friend is exactly right. By giving the example of the nuclear question, I wanted the Foreign Secretary to ensure that when the inquiry is announced in due course it will not be restricted in any way when dealing with all those key questions.
	Time is running out for the Government. I am sure Ministers and ex-Ministers are thinking about what will happenthe legacy questionif and when Labour loses. The Prime Minister had the chance to clear the decks immediately he came to office. He could have broken with Tony Blair's Iraq war legacy and started to rebuild public trust with an inquiry into the war. In the process, he would have built a stronger legacy of his own, but he failed; he ducked that chance and increasingly it seems that the legacy of Iraq is one that he will share with Tony Blair.

Several hon. Members: rose

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind the House that Mr. Speaker has placed a 10-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches, which applies from now.

Tony Wright: I very much enjoyed the speech made by the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), who is just leaving the Chamber. As I always do, I am now in a devilish way detaining him.
	The only note I thought was missing from the right hon. Gentleman's speech was humility. If we take ourselves back to those days in 2002 and 2003, I am afraid that the people in this place who were the great cheerleaders for war were not interested in exploring the kind of questions being asked from the Labour Benches about the legality of the war, and whether there were in fact weapons of mass destruction or whether a false prospectus was at work. None of those questions was at all interesting to the Opposition [ Interruption. ] to the official Opposition, who simply wanted to go further, faster.
	The courage was shown on the Labour Benches [ Interruption. ]and the Liberal Democrat Benches, where Members interrogated the arguments, and huge numbers of Members on the Labour Benches found they could not go with the Government. If there is to be an inquiry, the one inquiry the official Opposition could set up immediately would be why they failed during that critical periodthe one time when they needed to be effective. As we now know, they had it within their power to prevent British engagement in the Iraq war. The Conservative party should immediately put in place an inquiry as to why the official Opposition failed during that period.

Adam Holloway: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Tony Wright: These are only preliminary remarks but I am happy to give way to the hon. Gentleman.

Adam Holloway: I was a television correspondent during the war in 2003, and most of us in the media and the vast majority of the British public also swallowed the lie.

Tony Wright: I suspect most of us are quite anxious not to relive all those arguments in our few minutes' speeches. I was simply making the point that the arguments were intense at the time on the Labour Benches and on the Liberal Democrat Benches and not at all on the Conservative Benches, with a very few

Andrew Turner: And on this side.

Tony Wright: With a very few honourable exceptions. It is worth inserting those observations into the call for an inquiry now.
	I want only to say something about Parliament's role in the whole business, because that matters hugely. Just last week, two people gave evidence to the Public Administration Committee. One was Brian Jones, who was the leading defence intelligence expert at the Ministry of Defence. He said in terms that he thought Parliament had completely failed to ask the questions about Iraq that needed to be asked. He was followed by Mr. Carne Ross, a Foreign Office diplomat with experience in Iraq and in dealing with Iraq issues at the United Nations on our behalf who resigned from the Foreign Office over Iraq. He said in terms that he thought Parliament had been simply pathetic in its failure to get to the bottom of what happened.
	The question is whether we are content for that to be the case or whether we are not content and want to do something about it. The Committee, which I have the privilege of chairing, has explored the issue in enormous detail in recent years. In 2005, we carried out an inquiry into inquiries called Government by Inquiry, which covered the sort of issues that are being raised today about the kind of inquiry one might have and about the benefits or demerits of certain types of inquirypublic or private, led by judges or led by other people. Those are proper arguments and I think the House would find our report helpful in thinking its way through some of the issues.
	The Committee found that Parliament had given up the ability it routinely had in the 19th century, but has lost in more recent times, to commission inquiries. That has been a retreat on the part of the House. We proposed a device, which we called a parliamentary commission of inquiry, to insert Parliament back in the picture. In the Inquiries Act 2005, we formally gave away any residual rights we had when the role that Parliament used to have under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921 was removed. At least then there could be parliamentary resolutions to set up inquiries, but that power has gone. That is a huge retreat on the part of Parliament.
	We now have a situation that the public find inexplicable. As we now know, there is a huge majority in this place who think there should be an inquiry on Iraqthe biggest issue in foreign policy since the second world warwhere something important seems to have gone wrong. A huge majority in the House think an inquiry needs to be set in motion, yet it seems that it is not within our power to commission such an inquiry.
	This allegedly sovereign Parliament cannot do anything other than keep requesting of the Government that theythe Executiveset up an inquiry. That cannot be satisfactory. The House has to find a way, a time, and a device, on a cross-party basis, that enables us to get such an inquiry, on behalf of Parliament, the people that we represent and, possibly crucially, our armed forces. I suspect that the people who most want an inquiry are those who have been associated with military activity and their families. We have to find a device that enables such an inquiry to take place. If we do not find such a device, but simply sit around requesting that one day an inquiry be commissioned, we as a Parliament are not doing our job.
	I say to my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, whom I like and respect enormously, as he knows, this is the very last time when he can make the arguments that he made today. Unless he comes to the House before the summer recess and says that an inquiry is to be commissioned, Parliament is entitled to insist, before the summer, that that is done.

John Baron: First, I concur with the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) that it is probably members of the armed forces who served, and who are still serving, in Iraq who want an inquiry more than anyone else. They want to know the answers to certain questions to do with why this country went to war, because they have done everything that we have asked of them. The fault, if there is a fault with regard to the war, lies with us in this place.
	No one could doubt that we need an inquiry now. We have seen the scale of the foreign policy disaster, and the scandalous presentation of the intelligence information in the lead up to the war, and now the troops are returning. Now is a good time to have that inquiry. I do not think that anybody can dispute the fact that the war was an act of great folly. We went to war on a false premise; there were no weapons of mass destruction. We removed a tyrant, but that was never the justification for the war. It has never been the justification for any war. The intervention has brought about the involvement of foreign fighters in Iraq, some of them al-Qaeda. It has meant that the balance of power has been disrupted, to the extent that Iran is now the predominant power in the region. It has radicalised parts of the Muslim world against us, and we have seen for ourselves the great sacrifice of our troops in theatre.
	All that was done, I would suggest, to satisfy the hubris of a former Prime Minister who still to this day believes that it is better to err with the United States than to stand up and say to a friend that they got something wrong. An inquiry is required to examine not just the misrepresentation of intelligence in the lead up to the war, or the lack of post-war planning, but, to return to the point made by the hon. Member for Cannock Chase, our collective failure to reign back, or at least challenge, the hawkish ambitions of someone whom I certainly consider to be a rogue politician.
	Nowhere is the failureour failurebetter illustrated than in the Iraq dossier of 2002. A good number of hon. Members present will remember that we were recalled in September 2002 to hear about what was supposed to be a very important document. It was an opportunity for the Government to share with the public, as well as with us, for the first time internal advice given to Ministers by the security services.
	As a result of freedom of information requests made since then, and since Hutton, two things have become clear. First, the dossier was not, as our former Prime Minister claimed, solely the work of the Joint Intelligence Committee. Spin doctors were heavily involved on the inside of the process, drafting material, making suggestions and influencing the way in which the document was presented. Secondly, it is now possible, because of the wealth of information that we have received, even since the Hutton inquiry, from freedom of information requests, to piece together exactly how the intelligence reports were, to use that unfortunate term, sexed up.
	Let me briefly touch on the role of the spin doctors. We have long known that the dossier requested by the Prime Minister was, in reality, commissioned from the chairman of the JIC by Alastair Campbell, who chaired the two planning meetings on the dossier on 5 September and 9 September. We now know that spin doctors were also on the inside of the drafting process. Nothing illustrates that more clearly than the fact, which we have since learned, that one of the press officers, John Williams of the Foreign Office, actually wrote a preliminary draft dossier one day before the official draft was circulated under the name of the JIC chairman, John Scarlett, on 10 September.
	The significance of that document was downplayed by the Government during the Hutton inquiry. The Foreign Office was finally forced to make the dossier publicly available only last year, following a ruling of the Information Commissionera point that I raised in Prime Minister's questions with the then Prime Minister. As a result, there is every reason to think that Williams was part of the formal drafting process, and that his influence was formative. For one thing, John Scarlett's draft of the following day was circulated with an acknowledgment of
	considerable help from John Williams.
	Indeed, it is possible to identify passages that appear almost verbatim in both versions. Drafting notes and instructions apparently originated by Williams also appear in Scarlett's draft.
	Out of fairness, I have asked the Foreign Office to publish any information that both people could have used as a common source of material, because one could theoretically suggest that such material was the reason the spin doctor or press officer's draft, and the subsequent draft of the JIC chairman, were the same or very similar. However, the Foreign Office has continually refused to publish any such information. One can only infer that John William's draft played a major role in the production of the draft produced the next day by the JIC chairman.
	It is important to remind ourselves why the involvement of those press officers is so important. Lord Hutton cleared the Government of sexing up the intelligence only because he believed that
	The dossier was prepared and drafted by a small team of the assessment staff of the JIC
	and
	was issued...with the full approval of the JIC.
	All the evidence suggests that that is simply not true. Once the spin doctors became involved, the dossier process took on a life of its own, and the JIC retained only a distant, supervisory role.
	That the dossier was sexed up there can be no doubt. We have long suspected that balanced judgments and reservations expressed by the intelligence community were transformed into near-certainties, and now we have some of the evidence. One clue was given away in a response to an FOI request made only this month. An internal minute from Desmond Bowen, deputy head of the overseas and defence secretariat in the Cabinet Office, to John Scarlett, copying in Alastair Campbell and Jonathan Powell, reads:
	In looking at the WMD sections, you will clearly want to be as firm and authoritative as you can be. You will clearly need to judge the extent to which you need to hedge your judgements with, for example, 'it is almost certain' and similar caveats...I appreciate that this can increase the authenticity of the document in terms of it being a proper assessment.
	He goes on to say that that is absolutely necessary. That is a damning summary of what went wrong in the dossier-drafting process.

Paul Truswell: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

John Baron: I will, but it must be very quick.

Paul Truswell: The hon. Gentleman is constructing an admirable alibi to justify his party's complicity in the decision to go to war with Iraq. If he was not involved in that, then clearly my comments do not apply to him. Some 140 Labour Members voted against going to war with Iraq, as did virtually the whole Liberal Democrat party and a number of other parties. However, only six members of the Conservative party did so, although so many Members across the House weighed the evidence that was before them at the time and drew a completely separate conclusion. Is this exercise not partly about getting his party off the hook?

John Baron: I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman has only recently come into the Chamber. As one of those six who voted against the war, I will not bother answering that.
	I am trying to build up a case for to why the intelligence was misrepresented to the House. That is one good reason why we were misled. I have no problem with any Member who voted for the war, because the Prime Minister was fundamentally misleading the House in presenting the intelligence that he did. It was very excusable to support the war at that time, when we were being told by our Prime Minister that the intelligence available to him had built up such a strong case for war.
	But I accept that we as a Chamber and as a Parliament failed in our duty to question that Prime Minister strongly enough, which is why the inquiry should have available to it all the Cabinet papers leading up to that decision, because that will reveal that the decision was taken in July 2002 to go to war, the precondition being that public opinion had to be prepared in this country. That is why the dodgy dossier had such an important role.
	Time is short and I know that others want to get in, so let me summarise. There is a clear indication that spin doctors played a fundamental role in the production of that intelligence, and that it had a mission to persuade a sceptical House and a sceptical public of the need for war. As I have suggested, the decision to go to war had been taken well before. There is a leaked Cabinet Office memo of 21 July 2002, which the Government have refused to dismiss as untrue and which was published in  The Sunday Times. It makes the point that the decision had been taken, but a precondition was that the then Prime Minister had to persuade a sceptical public that war was needed. That was the importance of the dodgey dossier.
	In conclusion, speaking from Iraq in June 2007, the Prime Minister said that lessons must be learned on the use of intelligence in the run-up to the war. Almost two years after that, the troops are returning home. Now is the time for action, not words.

Derek Twigg: May I put on record, as I always do in such debates, the fact that I recognise the courage, professionalism and bravery of our armed forces and the amazing job that they do. We must never forget how many of them have lost their lives in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, and we must never forget those injured and the many thousands of Iraqi civilians who have been killed as part of the invasion of Iraq and the aftermath.
	I have been to Iraq on a number of occasions to visit our armed forces personnel and my admiration for them knows no bounds. The last time I went we were in 50 heat going into Basra, and the fact that they were able to operate, work and fight in such conditions is quite remarkable. They have achieved much, and we should not lose sight of that in the debate. Often they said to me, We are not sure the Government or the country appreciate what we were doing out here. We feel we are doing a job. Development is taking place, the Iraqi army has been trained and even the police are getting better. That is taking place to this day and has been outlined in the Front-Bench contributions. We should not forget the dangerous work that our armed forces personnel are still doing.
	I, for one, will not run away from my responsibility for voting for the invasion of Iraq. I still believe that that was the right decision. If it had not been based on the issue of weapons of mass destruction, I believe that Saddam was such a destabilising influence in the middle east that, given his track record, we should have done all we could to remove him in any case. However, I accept the accuracy of some of the information that we have been given, and there have been a number of inquiries, so I will not go over all that again.

John Barrett: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Derek Twigg: Briefly. I am conscious that several other hon. Members wish to speak.

John Barrett: Does the hon. Gentleman recall that at the time it was put by his Labour Government to Saddam Hussein that if he gave up his weapons of mass destruction, he could remain in power?

Derek Twigg: That was a man who was completely untrustworthy, with a track record of causing conflict and thousands of deaths in the middle east. He was a dangerous, dangerous man, and I think the decision to remove him was the correct one and Iraq is a better place for it.
	As I said, I will not run away from my decision to vote for the war, but I take exception to those who are trying now to blame the Government for the fact that we went to war, and those who do not accept their responsibility for not asking the right questions or for not taking the decision that they would have taken if they had known what they know today. I respect those who voted against the war. I did not agree with their position but I respect them for it, and they have every right to make the points they do, unlike the Opposition, who are trying to wriggle their way out by blaming it all on the Government.
	Iraq is still a very dangerous place. There is a lot of hard work going on there. I support the Government's position on when a public inquiry should take placein other words, that we should not announce it at this stage. We will have to announce one; that is the right thing to do.
	I am struck by the fact that the Opposition have been telling us for years that our armed forces are overstretched, are too busy and have too much to do. There is no doubt that they are amazingly busy and have an immense amount to do, but the Opposition want us to start an inquiry and put more pressure on the armed forces at a time when we are talking about a draw-down from Iraq and changes in Afghanistan, with the American surge and the discussions that will take place between the Americans, the EU and NATO about our future policy and role in Afghanistan.
	It would be wrong to announce an inquiry now. The key thing is to get on with the draw-down in Iraq and with the plans for Afghanistan, and not distract our armed forces and those in charge of them at this time.
	The argument has been put forward from the Opposition Benches on a number of occasions that our armed forces personnelthe soldiers, sailors and airmen and womenare demanding an inquiry. That has not been my experience. In my many trips around the world to visit our armed forces personnel, I can hardly remember an occasion when someone raised the issue. I do not accept the suggestion that our armed forces also want an inquiry.
	There is no doubt that we should hold an inquiry. I support that for various reasons, but I have explained to the House why I believe the Government's position is the correct one at this stage. There is some suggestion that we are trying to cover things up or hide them away. Several inquiries have already taken placeHutton, Butler, the Intelligence Committee and the Select Committee. There have been numerous debates in the House about the reasons for the invasion, the aftermath, the way we have dealt with it, the military operations and so on. The suggestion that we are trying to hide from debate is plain wrong.
	We already know about some of the issues, such as the 45 minutes and the weapons of mass destruction. I recall that Butler said in his report that it would be a rash person who claimed that stocks of biological or chemical weapons would never be found in Iraq. I do not know whether they will or not, but we do know that mistakes occurred there. We know about the problems caused by the disbandment of the Iraqi security forces, the army and the police, and no one doubts that that was a mistake. We know that some of the tactics that we employed in the counter-insurgency war, and the development issue, the lack of civilian involvement and the slowness in moving things on were mistakes. That is not hidden away, so I am not sure what the inquiry will reveal that we do not already know about those aspects.
	We know what the intelligence failings were. I disagree that the then Prime Minister or the Government deliberately misled the House. There is no evidence to support that from the inquiries that have already taken place. It is a smokescreen used by people who opposed the war or want to be seen to have opposed it because they did not believe the information that was given to them.

John Baron: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Derek Twigg: If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, time is tight and many of my hon. Friends wish to speak.
	The House had ample opportunity to question the Government and Ministers about the issues before the invasion and since. I do not accept that the Government are hiding anything in any way.
	I can think of few perfect wars. There are always problems when military action is taken, for whatever reason. I shall not go into all the historical reasons, but the planning can go wrong, things can go wrong on the ground and there are issues of equipment and supplies. Over the centuries, there have always been such problems in war and it is wrong to suggest that there is such a thing as a perfect war. However, we should always learn lessons. One obvious issue is whether mistakes in previous wars from which we should have learned have been made again; the inquiry that has to take place should look into that important issue. That inquiry should not only take account of the decisions leading up to the war and the discussions that took place, but go back well before that to consider our relations with Iraq and Saddam's regime.
	For me, the key thing is that the inquiry should draw in all those elements and put them together in a full report, so that we can see what happened stage by stage. All the published reports to which I have referred should be included, as should be the additional information that might well come out of the inquiry's investigation. I am sure that the House would have ample opportunity to discuss such issues when the inquiry report was published.
	As I said, I still believe that the decision to go into Iraq was right. Saddam was a terrible destabilising influence in the middle east; he was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of his own people and others in the region. I believe that history will show that we did the right thing. Iraq still has lots of difficulties and problems, but it is in a position to move forward again on its economic development, its schools and its democracy in Government. We must give it our full support.
	I finish by saying that whatever happens and however the House deals with this issue, we must always bear it in mind that when we send our armed forces out there, they are doing the bidding of the Government. They have gone out and done a remarkable job, and many rightly feel that they have achieved much amid terrible sacrifice and terrible conditions. I would not like our armed forces personnel, who have been fighting, working hard and supporting development in Iraq and Afghanistan, to feel in any way that their efforts have been worthlessthey have not beenor that their efforts have not been fully appreciated by the country. I am sure that they have been. They are the finest armed forces in the world, and we should continue to support them in all the ways we can.

Adam Holloway: How did we stumble into this war without understanding how it would evolve, without a strategy for success and without the resources necessary to achieve that success? The Government narrative claims success in Basraand it is a success, despite everything. However, the Government claim that it is due to some sort of British master plan and is a triumph for British strategy. Some amazing things have happened, including those involving my constituent Colonel Richard Iron, who was recently described as the saviour of Basra, but that Government claim is just not true.
	The vast majority of our population are not as stupid as the Government think. Every time the Chief of the Defence Staff or another senior officer stands up and reads out the Government-approved narrative, the reputation of our armed forces suffers, we further damage the reputation of the UK, and we drive radicalisation across the Muslim world. Huge questions arise in all sorts of important areas. Furthermore, and importantly, while we continue the delusion that we got things right, we repeat some of the mistakes made in Afghanistan, where British troops are still being killed and many more maimed for life.
	Those who claim that we should not expose things that went wrong while we are in the midst of war say that to do so would undermine the morale of our armed forces, who are committed to battle. Nothing could be further from the truth. Take the example of the United States, which was virtually beaten in Iraq in 2006. By 2008 its armed forces had been radically reformed and it had turned what had looked like defeat in Iraq into near-victory. The Americans engaged in open debate, encouraged criticism and involved the American public, media and academia.
	I understand that bits of any inquiry might have to remain private, but its purpose would not be to embarrass the Government, although it probably would. With a new President in the White House, we have a gigantic opportunity to remould what has become known as the war on terror.

Tobias Ellwood: My hon. Friend mentioned President Obama. General David Petraeus is one of the most influential generals speaking to President Obama, and his big statement has been that it is no longer acceptable simply to defeat the enemy; we also have to enable the local. Do we not need an inquiry into the Iraq war because we have failed so badly to enable the local? Our military did a fantastic job in defeating the enemy, but Government Departments failed to enable the local and to reconstruct the post-conflict environment.

Adam Holloway: I totally agree. This is an opportunity to reset the conditions needed to win our struggle against political Islam. We will not be able to do that if we do not try to understand what happened. If we had sat down on 12 September 2001, written on the back of a cigarette packet a plan called How to lose the war on terror and acted on it, we would have done many of the things that Britain and America have done. The invasion of Afghanistan, of course, was brilliantly executed and our troops and intelligence services have done an amazing job. However, overall there has been no grand plan or strategy. We started okay: we invaded Afghanistan and quickly achieved our primary objective of getting rid of al-Qaeda and pleasing the Afghan people by removing the Taliban from power.
	Then, however, our focus switched to Iraq. The decision to offer UK support to a US invasion was made pretty much alone by the then Prime Minister at the so-called Crawford summit in April 2002. The only thing on Tony Blair's mind at the time seems to have been to win influence over the United States. There is no evidence that at that point the Prime Minister sought or received any guidance from the Ministry of Defence, so he was unable to set military conditions over US war plans. Remember the pictures of Churchill and Roosevelt with the chiefs of staff standing behind them during the second world war? I do not think that any such picture exists of Mr. Blair and President Bush.
	Mr. Blair is reported to have returned to the UK and asked the Ministry of Defence to come up with a plan to support an American invasion. On the day of the invasion, we still had no agreement with the US on a political end-state for Iraq. In fact, as I have said before in the House, we ended up in Basra only because of a decision by the Turkish Parliament, not the British one. The Turks voted not to allow us to use their territory as a launching pad for entry into Iraq. So we involved ourselves in a US invasion through a decision by our Prime Minister at a ranch in Texas without reference to the people who would have to carry it out, and we ended up taking responsibility for southern Iraq almost by accident.
	Once we got ourselves in, our objective was to get out, initially by reducing our force numbers as soon as possible from 40,000 to 15,000. At the same time, we were wandering around telling anyone who would listen that the UK were the best at counter-insurgency warfare. What of that so-called comprehensive approach, or elements of it? Our focus was not on the development and restoration of security in Basra, although that was required of us under the Geneva convention, but on cutting down force numbers.
	Even today, Baswaris ask what the UK has done for them; there is very little recognition of the UK's effort. Although we were slow to get going and we lost millions through corruption, it is fair to say that most of Basra's infrastructure, such as it is, is there as a result of British money. However, the Baswaris do not appreciate that. We had no clear strategy at that point in the transitional period, so things went over to Jaish al-Mahdi militia control. In much the same way, we are losing and have lost the consent of ordinary people in Helmand province. We need to learn the lessons of Iraq, not least in respect of the structural problems of the comprehensive approach.
	We also need to consider equipment and overall defence procurement. Are the wars that we have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan the wars of the foreseeable future? Is state-on-state war now less likely? Will armoured divisions ever be fighting for their lives on the plains of north Germany? Do we need to look very hard at the whole structure of our armed forces in order to win this new war?
	We must also consider what friends of mine who are at a senior level in the armed forces have described to me as the failure of generalship. As one member of our foreign intelligence service put it to me, No one gets promoted for saying things are going badly. We need to think carefully about the problem of officers providing what has become known as politically aware military advice. It is extremely dangerous when that starts to fit with the policy narrative. That has seriously hindered us in Afghanistan, and it is a major contributor to the very difficult situation that we now face there.
	The Government's narrative is that the job is nearly done in southern Iraq, but they are choosing to ignore reports of new evolving terror networks. Our troops and commanders on the ground have done a great job, but the problem throughout has been a lack of strategy coming from London. We had no serious strategy for Iraq. We had no strategy for Afghanistanalthough, to be fair, I believe that the Foreign Secretary and the Defence Secretary do now get it. There are huge lessons from Iraq that we have not learned and are not applying. We have no serious strategy for how to win the so-called war on terror, which I personally would quite like us to win.
	The truth is Iraq remains a disaster for us. As well as all the lives lost through the decision made at that ranch in Texas, it stands as a huge driver of radicalisation right across the Muslim world, and it is into this mix that dozenspossibly hundredsof Britons of Pakistani origin have been gravitating. An Army friend said a couple of months ago that they had been tracking someone speaking into a Taliban radio set in Arabic, but with a Yorkshire accent. What are we to do? I think that we should declare a new war on the drivers of radicalisation, which my hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) spoke about. One does not deal with a cancer by bombing it from 20,000 ft and distributing it across the globe, but by making the body as healthy as one can and cutting it out. We have to refocus and stop it dispersing its cells all around the world.
	We have nothing to be afraid of in a wide-ranging inquiry. It is not about criticising the Government or an individual, whether a soldier or a civilian, and it is not about criticising the Army, which has done an incredible job despite a woeful lack of strategy. It is about learning lessons for the future: lessons for Afghanistan, and lessons on how we manage relationships between Ministers and the chiefs of staff, between the armed forces and the British people, and between the UK and our ally, the US. This is far too important to ignore; that is why we need to have an inquiry as soon as we can. We must give ourselves the best possible chance of winning the long war.

Jeremy Corbyn: Last week saw the sixth anniversary of the parliamentary debate that took us into the war in Iraq. Those of us who took part in that debate will never forget that day. Pressures were put on Members of Parliament on both sides of the House by their Whips, who told them that the case for war was overwhelming and that they should therefore support the Government's proposals on that matter. The result was that 140 Labour MPs voted contrary to what the Government wanted, as did all the Liberal Democrats and Members from the nationalist parties, and a small number of Conservatives. Nevertheless, this Parliament voted to take us into war, and every MP who took part in that vote must bear some responsibility for the decision they took that day.
	It is also important to remember that in putting the Government's case, the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, made it very clear, among other things, that this was a war to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, not a war for regime changebut the situation turned out to be somewhat different. We need to have an inquiry not only into what has happened in Iraq since the war but into all the decision making that led up to that war.
	I reiterate the point that I made in an intervention on the Foreign Secretary: all the relevant papersthe Cabinet papers, the Cabinet papers that were not delivered to the Cabinet but prepared for it, the legal advice that was prepared but not given, and the legal advice that was givenmust form a part of that inquiry. When the Information Commissioner ruled that those papers should be made public because that was overwhelmingly in the public interest, the Justice Secretary decided that there was an overwhelming national security case for their not being revealed.
	We have been complicit in starting a war in Iraq in which well over half a million people have died, including, tragically, many service people of all countriesand the instability continues. The ramifications of this war are absolutely enormous, and the case for an inquiry is overwhelming. I welcome the fact that the Foreign Secretary appears to have conceded that there will be an inquiry at some point, but I honestly do not see what the delay is all about. There is plenty of precedent for inquiries while troops are still on deployment; many examples have been given, so I will not go through them all again. I do not understand the idea that we should wait until the last British soldier is out of Iraq, if that is what the Foreign Secretary was saying. I suspect that some kind of training element will be there for a long time, and that will be used ever more as an excuse.

Bob Ainsworth: Let me remind my hon. FriendI am not sure whether he was here at the timeof what the Foreign Secretary explicitly did not say. He did not say that we needed to wait until every single British soldier was out of Iraq. He said that we needed to wait until the combat operation had finished, and it is due to finish in the summer of this year.

Jeremy Corbyn: I accept that the issue is when the combat operation is finished; obviously, I hope that it finishes very soon, and that we get an inquiry as a result. However, I still do not see the necessity of delay in preparing for the inquiry.

Peter Soulsby: Does my hon. Friend recall that in his introductory remarks the Foreign Secretary also explicitly did not say that the terms of reference of an inquiry would include the very matters that my hon. Friend is discussing: the events that led up to taking us into Iraq and the way in which the House and the nation were duped at that time?

Jeremy Corbyn: Absolutely. A series of dossiers and bits of information were produced for the benefit of Members of Parliament and the media. Who can forget the map produced by the  Evening Standard, which indicated that just about everybody was under an immediate and ever-present threat of attack by Iraq? Who can ever forget that Hans Blix and Mohamed el-Baradei were withdrawn from Iraq in December 2002 and not allowed to return? Many Members of this House were present during a very interesting and lengthy meeting with Hans Blix upstairs in one of the Committee Rooms, in which he explained that he was 99 per cent. certain that all weapons of mass destruction, and all weapons with the capability of attacking other countries, had been removed and destroyed. The then Prime Minister apparently went with the 1 per cent. option; the President of France went with 99 per cent. and did not allow French participation in the invasion.
	Let me go back to the point made by the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Holloway) about the antecedents of the decision making surrounding the war. We went into Afghanistan in 2001; eight years later, we are still there, apparently about to win that particular conflict. Given the current rate of progress, I suspect that in another eight years we will still be in Afghanistan about to win that conflict. We have to think of something different in that respect.
	The Iraq war came out of President Bush's axis of evil speech of January 2002. Then there was the rather curious summit around a barbecue in Crawford, Texas, where the then Prime Minister and President Bush had a discussion about it. If minutes are kept of discussions that take place around barbecues, I would like to see at least some kind of report of what happened and what instructions were given by the then Prime Minister to the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office afterwards.
	We then had the preparations for the deployment of forces, the build-up of forces, and the arguments in favour of Iraq's posing a threat, and we ended up with the huge degree of public disquiet. Even if Members of this House are not capable of asking questions, the fact that 1 million people turned up in Hyde park on 15 February 2003the biggest ever demonstration in British historyshould have triggered some mode of inquiry in their minds. If 1 million people are prepared to give up a day to come to London to demonstrate, they probably feel strongly about the issue, so notice should be taken of the views that they put forward. Any inquiry has to go into the background of those matters.
	The effects in Iraq must also be looked into. I have been in this House long enough to remember the days in the 1980s when Britain was happily selling arms to Iraq, and a very small number of us opposed those arms sales. Indeed, we were told in the corridors that it was important to support Iraq because it was against Iran, and therefore one of our allies, and we were told that the arms sales were good for British business and British jobs. Even after Halabjah in 1988, Britain still took part in the Baghdad arms fair a year later. An awful lot of background needs to be looked into.
	I am not here to defend the regime that existed in Iraq beforeI was one of those privileged to be able to offer my opposition to it. However, the result of this invasion and the instability that has followed has been the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Some 4 million Iraqis have been forced into internal or external exile, and have had their lives ruined as a result. A large number of British soldiers have lost their lives and the grieving families continue to grieve. They ask, Why were we sent there? What deception led to this war, and did our son or daughter die in vain because of it?
	I conclude with this thought. The other issue that I want an inquiry to deal with is the legality of the war. There were discussions at the United Nations, and a determination by the Foreign Secretary to get a second UN resolution. The second UN resolution never came, because there was so much opposition to it inside the Security Council, which would have to take that decision, and in the General Assembly. We went to war on a premise that had no legal basis, and on information that proved to be incorrect, and as a result we unleashed some horrible forces and some terrible effects on the people of Iraq. If we respect international law, we should abide by it. If we respect the decisions of the UN, we should abide by them. A war of aggression for regime change is illegal under the terms of the UN charter. The former UN Secretary-General said as much.
	It is up to us, as Members of Parliament, to do two things. First, we should ensure that in future we have real war-making powers, so that Parliament makes such decisions. It should not be done by the Prime Minister using the royal prerogative on behalf of the Head of State. We got the debate in Parliament because of the enormous number of people opposed to the war. The Prime Minister felt pressurised into having that debate and wanted to drag us into that decision. Secondly, we have a duty to say, Enough is enough. Now is the time to have an inquiry. We must have a more open inquiry than the one described in this motion, but no matterit is moving in the right direction. I hope that we make the decision today to have an inquiry, not in order to change what happenedwe cannot do thatbut at least to understand what happened. We need to understand the horrors that have come out of this war and try, above all else, to prevent the same thing from happening to some future Parliament and some other country.

Angus MacNeil: I will not detain the House for long. I would like to deal with why we need an inquiry into the Iraq war, and why the issue is so important. As we know, and has been said by the hon. Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) and many others, the war was based on a lie, propaganda and hype. Perhaps people watching outside this Chamber have bought into the idea that politicians lie perpetually. I know, and we know, that that is not so. There can be arguments on emphasis and shades of grey, but since I have come here in 2005, there have not been any big whopping factual lies. The claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that could reach us in 45 minutes was a big whopping factual lie. It was the lie on which the propaganda and hype was based. It was the first time that the UK went to war on the grounds of dodgy, unsound intelligenceand I hope that it will be the last. That alone is enough to justify an inquiry: for a state of 60 million people to be so utterly misled should be enough to justify an inquiry.
	On 18 March 2003, the Prime Minister gave a speech to goad the country to warthat is also enough to justify an inquiry. I encourage Members to look back at that speech in  Hansard, column 761, to see the linguistic gymnastics employed. The speech becomes more absurd in the reading with the passage of time. The Prime Minister made mention of unreasonable vetoes, which was a real Blair classic of true linguistic gymnastics. He was, of course, referring to France, which had opposed the war at the UN Security Council. In his actions and in his words, Blair made France right and he made the UK wrong.
	On 18 March 2003, the Prime Minister stood at that Dispatch BoxI saw it on television; I was not a Memberwith his macho, starry-eyed posturing, challenging the House of Commons to stand down British troops and turn back. The fact was that he had already marched them up to the top of the hill, and he was relying on the base, gut instincts that many in this House unfortunately had in order to carry on. People voted for war, feeling that they were already too far in. Of course, people should not have thought with their guts. Many people got shot in their guts as a result.
	One of the reasons we should have an inquiry is that this House regularly pays homage to those who have had their lives damaged or have lost relatives in this war. Today I was given a letter by the military families who have lost people in the war. They want an inquiry, and I am grateful to Rose Gentle, Reg Keys and Chris Nineham for a copy of their letter. If the families want an inquiry, surely that should be enough for the Government, who regularly pay homage at the Dispatch Box to the families and their loved ones who have been lost in this war. In their letter to the Prime Minister they say:
	Our sons believed that the conflict was to neutralise the WMD threat.
	That belief was fed by graftingplaying on the innate jingoism of some journalists and newspapers, and some Members of this House, who swallowed the 45 minutes spin hook, line and sinker. The 45 minutes headlines in the newspapers went unchallenged by the Government, and that is significant. I would wager that had the headlines said the oppositethat the Government were lying about 45 minutesthey would have indignantly challenged and bullied. Their complicity with headlines about the 45 minutes claim shows exactly the game that they were playing.
	This war, as has been said by others, has taken the lives of 150,000 people directly, and according to some estimates its consequences might have led to the deaths of another 600,000. The dead and injured, and their families, should be honoured in this House by an inquiry that will answer the fundamental questionwhy? I was not in the House at the time, but my answer to that question is that it was an odd, sycophantic desire on the part of Tony Blair to appease the discredited former US President George Bush. In my view, it is as simple as that. That is also in line with the intervention made by the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell) on his feelings about what happened at the US ranch, where the two men connived for war.
	The case for war did not last long. Four months after it started, the UK's fig leaf of an excuse was starting to fall apart. After Blair had spoken to Congress, my right hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) said:
	Inch by inch, Tony Blair is moving away from the ground that he stood on when he dragged an unwilling country into war.
	The Government should be holding an independent...inquiry into...how the country came to be misled about Iraq's arms capability.
	That was six years ago. The Government have been ducking and diving, dodging and weaving, for six years over an inquiry into the Iraq war. Five years ago, as was mentioned earlier, Australia held such an independent inquiry, which criticised their own Government, but criticised other allied Governments far more greatly. At the time that the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was telling the House that we should not hold an inquiry, he went into a broom cupboard for a video conference with Congress in the Baker-Hamilton inquiry.
	I have mentioned lives, which are important, but in these credit crunch times I would also like to consider the financial cost of the war. Last year, the cost of military operations in Iraq was 1.5 billion, which equates to 4 million a day. Approximately 6.5 billion has been spent since the war began, and I often wonder for what else that money could have paid in health, education and infrastructure, rather than being spent on destroying health, education and infrastructure. If ever there were a case for turning swords into ploughshares, the Iraq debacle of the Labour Government of 2003 makes it.
	We need an inquiry to stamp out such behaviour among world leaders and aspiring world leaders. Let us just imagine, as the superpowers of China and India grow, their feeling that they could interfere in European matters the way that we felt we could interfere in middle eastern matters in the case of Iraq. What future do we bequeath our descendants if we leave them a world in which such behaviour on our doorstep went unpunished, or at least uninvestigated?
	I draw hon. Members' attention to an extract from, of all people, a former Ministry of Defence permanent secretary, Sir Michael Quinlan, who said of the former Prime Minister:
	He exerted or connived... to mould legal advice to his preference and failed to disclose fully... even that moulded advice; and... so arranged the working of the Cabinet that colleagues had no timely or systematic opportunity to consider the merits of his policy in an informed manner.
	The hon. Member for Carmarthen, East and Dinefwr (Adam Price) first drew that to the House's attention in the debate that Plaid Cymru and the SNP led on 31 October 2006. It was damning then and it remains so; the passage of time does not diminish it. The very least that the families and the dead deserve from the House is a full inquiry into the war in Iraq. I say, therefore, get it going soon.

Gordon Prentice: My friend the Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) talked about pressure on the day, way back in March 2003. At that time, the Prime Minister was having one-to-one meetings with Labour Members he thought could be persuaded to support him. After the vote, a colleague who had voted for the war said to me in the Tearoom that he thought he had made the biggest mistake of his life.
	My friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) invited the Conservatives to show some humility about their role, because without them we would never have gone to war. Their fingerprints are all over the decision. Only six Conservatives voted against the war, whereas 140 Labour Members voted against it, as well as, creditably, the Liberals and the other minor parties. That is where we are. I have read the Conservative motion two or three times. It contains nothing with which I disagree, so I will vote with the Conservatives to support it.
	Why do we need an inquiry? The answer is self-evident. The country was comprehensively misled, and we have been misled ever since. Lessons on Iraq, the Defence Committee's report in 2004, stated that the
	MoD has failed to provide us with certain documents... and has demonstrated... less co-operation and openness than we have the right to expect as a select committee of the House of Commons.
	The Foreign Affairs Committee stated:
	Powers to send for papers, persons and records are, in practice, unenforceable in relation to the Executive
	when the Executive do not want to co-operate. Butler had a narrow remit. The report spoke of the deficiencies of Cabinet Government, saying that Cabinet Ministers were spectators rather than active participants. It was as though Cabinet was a vegetable patch.

Douglas Hogg: Has not Lord Butler's report done an important thing, which has enabled the House to set the Prime Minister's public statements against the private Joint Intelligence Committee information that he received? It is clear that the Prime Minister omitted all the qualifications and provisos in the JIC material in his public statements.

Gordon Prentice: As I said, Butler had a narrow remit and what has subsequently come out tells a different story from what Butler said at the time.
	The Hutton inquiry displayed the hidden inner wiring of the British Government, but it failed to take evidence under oath, as my friend the Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) said earlier. When Lord Hutton appeared before the Select Committee on which I served, I asked him why he did not take evidence under oath. The Prime Minister was, famously, called before him. Lord Hutton replied that he did not think it was necessary. I believe that it is, and that the new inquiry needs to take evidence on oath to get to the truth.
	There has been a cascade of memoirs. Of course, memories are beginning to fade, but some memoirs have been blocked. Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who was our man in Baghdad in 2003-04 and served in the United Nations five years previously, right through the run-up to the war in Iraq, has written a book called The Cost of War. It has still not been published. When he appeared before the Committee in January 2006, he told us that his memoirs were
	in the fridge not the freezer.
	They are in the freezer and should be defrosted. Last week, the Justice Secretary, a former Foreign Secretary, told us that the minutes of the critical Cabinet meetings could not be published, although he went on to say that they would be released to any inquiry that was set up.
	We need an inquiry. My friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg), with all his experience as a former Armed Forces Minister, said that in his travels around the world he did not meet military people who were calling for an inquiry. However, the military top brass are calling for one. Lord Bramhall, no less, said that the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, failed properly to consult the chiefs of staff or his Cabinet colleagues before going to war. It is perfectly proper to have a senior military person on the commission of inquiry, as happened a lifetime and more ago in the inquiry into what happened in the Dardanelles. Lord Craig, former Air Marshal of the RAF, supports an inquiry. He said:
	It is very timely to have an inquiry before memories fade.
	Memories do fade, as the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) said. With every passing year, they dim. My friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin) has just published a book, A View from the Foothills, in which he recounts discussions we had with Tony Blair way back in 2002-03. I remember them, but one starts to forget the expression on a person's face, the people who spoke and those who chose to stay silent and so on. Those things are all part of the story. General Sir Mike Jackson wants an inquiry now, not after all the soldiers have come back from Iraq.
	We need an inquiry to establish the facts. We need to learn from what happened, and, most important, we need to ensure that it does not happen again. We must also rebuild public confidence. My friend the Member for Cannock Chase referred to the Public Administration Committee's various reports on inquiries. Most recently, it produced a report recommending that Parliament set up its own parliamentary commission of inquiry.
	Why do we have to wait on the Executive to act? We are told that Parliament is supreme. Why is it beyond the wit of MPs in all parts of the House who were against the war to come together and table a motion to force the Government to bring about such an inquiry? When Lord Justice Scott held his inquiry into arms for Iraq, which took four years, even he said that if Select Committees had had all the information that he had,
	A select committee might have been a better form for the Inquiry to have taken.
	However, as everyone knows, Select Committees have their flaws. The answer is a properly constituted parliamentary commission of inquiry.
	It is very important to take evidence on oath. The inquiry should meet in public, but with provision to meet in private if sensitive material needs to be considered. Civil servants and diplomats should be invited to give evidence when they feel they have something relevant to say. We had a diplomat and a civil servant before the Public Administration Committee last week. Brian Jones was our top man for chemical and biological warfare. He told us that before the dossiers were published, he had huge reservations about the claims that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and he was the man who should have known. He wrote to the deputy chief director of intelligence to register his misgivings. He thought that there very probably would be no weapons of mass destruction.
	We also heard persuasive evidence from a former diplomat who resigned from the Foreign Office over the decision to go to war in Iraq. He was a man who loved his job and wanted to be a diplomat. He said that in the run-up to war
	there was such a momentum towards war, such urgency about it, that anyone who put their hand up at that point would have been crushed.

Angus MacNeil: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Gordon Prentice: I do not have the time, unfortunately.
	That diplomat told us:
	I had read the intelligence on Iraq for four and a half years, been part of the Joint Intelligence Committee process, had taken part in US/UK bilaterals every quarter for four and a half years, and during that time the assessment of Iraq and the assessment of our intelligence on Iraq was very clear. It was that there was no significant threat from Iraq. From WMD, or from anything else.
	We were comprehensively led up the garden path and we need an inquiry. I do not know why the Government want to divide the House on the issue, because we all want an inquiry. If the question is one of timing, the combat troops will be out of Iraq in a few months' time. Why can the Government not just break the habit of a lifetime and support what the Conservatives are proposing?

Tobias Ellwood: It is a pleasure to participate in this important debate. Let me begin with a quotation from page 81 of State of Denial, a book by Bob Woodward, famed for Watergate:
	On November 21, the day before Thanksgiving, 71 days after the 9/11 attacks, Bush asked Rumsfeld to start updating the war plan for Iraq.
	'Let's get started on this,' Bush recalled saying that day. 'And get Tommy Franks'
	General Franks, who is in charge of the United States Central Command
	'looking at what it would take to protect America by removing Saddam Hussein if we have to.'
	That was in November 2001. The hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice) made an important point. Memories may be fading, but memoirs are slowly coming out and more and more information is leaking out, so we are slowly getting more of the truth about what happened leading up to the war in 2003 and after.
	Let me make my position clear. I was not in favour of an invasion at that juncture. I am a military person by background and I did not feel there was any evidence that we were under threat. That did not necessarily mean that we would not invade at a later juncture, but with everything that was in place at that point, I did not feel there was the evidence to say that an invasion should happen then.

Adam Holloway: Does my hon. Friend think it was reasonable for people in all parts of the House to trust the assertion of the then Prime Minister that the war was necessary?

Tobias Ellwood: My hon. Friend makes an important point, because that assertion has now been questioned. Any Prime Minister now coming to the House saying, We must now go to war, will certainly be questioned in more detail. It is all the more clear why we need an inquiry into Iraq. What were the decisions? What evidence was the then Prime Minister seeing that made him come to the House and say, You must follow me and we must send our armed forces to Iraq?

Lynne Jones: I never got an answer from the then Prime Minister to my question about why suddenly, in 2003, Saddam Hussein was considered a threat, whereas in all the years leading up to President Bush's Axis of evil speech, in 1997, 1998 and 1999, there was no mention of Saddam Hussein being a threat.

Tobias Ellwood: The hon. Lady's views are now on the record.
	It was interesting to hear a former Defence Minister say that, even with everything he now knew, he still believed that war was the right decision, because Saddam Hussein was a bad man. Yes, we knew he was a bad man, but I thought that regime change was in fact illegal.
	The second document that I wish to bring to the House's attention was released today and is called Pursue, Prevent, Protect, Prepare: The United Kingdom's Strategy for Countering International Terrorism. Perhaps Plan should be addedthat is, we should plan for what to do if we invade a Muslim country, because if we do not have a plan when we invade, we leave a vacuum and extremists take over. That is exactly what has happened in Iraq and, unfortunately, something very similar is taking place in Afghanistan.
	There are many questions that need to be answered. First, there are questions about going to war, weapons of mass destruction, intelligence, claims about 45 minutes, what Alastair Campbell's role was and the absence of a second resolution. The resolution that we voted on in the House was 10 years old. How can we allow our military to go to war on the back of a resolution that is 10 years old?
	That aside, it may be that Parliament in fact votes in favour of war. The more important question then is: how do we conduct ourselves in the aftermath of that attack? That is where we fundamentally failed our military. We went into IraqI pay tribute to 7 Armoured Brigade, which did a fantastic job in bringing Basra to peacethe dust then settled and our armed forces looked over their shoulders and said, What next? I believe that Tony Blair would probably still be in office had there been a proper plan and had we been able to move Basra forward and make it a safe and prosperous place.
	The absence of a plan meant that nothing happened, and six years later we were still there, trying to work out what to do. That is not the way to conduct counter-insurgency; it is not even the way to get rid of a dictator, but it is the way the Government proved there was no planning. That is why we are calling so vehemently for an inquiry into Iraq. We had no plan, there was no strategy and there was no idea. There were no efforts to harness the euphoria of the fall of Saddam Hussein and to sow the seeds of governance. Without a plan, nothing happens and we turn ourselves from liberators into occupiers.
	I ask the Minister: where was the army of civil servants, the linguists, the engineers and the planners? There were none. Where was the post-conflict construction plan that would lead Iraq into prosperity? There was none. I am afraid that I place a lot of the blame not on the military, but on another Departmentthe Department for International Development. Where was the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short)? I understand that she sent a memo round her Department on 23 March 2003, the day of the invasion, saying, We're not sure if this war is actually legal. Do nothing. Do not get involved. The Department therefore sat on its hands for two months until eventually she resigned and a new person was put in, at which point the Department woke up and said, My God, we should get involved here.
	That is where we let down our military. It meant its job got harder and harder, week after week, month after month and year after year. Looting turned into the development of militias, people grouped together to try to salvage some sort of livelihood and we became the problem. The thing that united these militias as we went in and around Basra and the palace was the fact that they all had a pop at our military, showing how we were regardedas actual occupiers by that time. I am thus astonished that the Defence Secretary had the audacity to come to this House on 14 January this year and state:
	I am proud to say that we are at the point of completing the UK mission... our forces can return home with their heads held high.[ Official Report, 14 January 2009; Vol. 486, c. 244.]
	How far from the truth is it possible to be? I believe that not since Suez have we had such cause to hang our heads in shame and also to scratch our heads over the political failurenot a military one. It was a political failure, in which we cut troop numbers too fast, reconstructed too slowly and eventually lost control completely.
	I am not saying that war was avoidable, but I am saying that there was no planning for the peace. The truth came out when Colin Powell admitted in his Adlai Stevenson moment that when he went to the United Nations on 5 February to explain why the invasion was justified, it was one of the lowest points in his careerhe had to defend the indefensible at that point.
	The atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein might well have meant an eventual invasion, but as a military person, I say to the House that there are many ways of getting rid of a tyrant other than a full invasion. If we choose a full invasion, we should make sure that we have a second wave of reconstruction and so forth backing up the Army to take advantage of that invasion. The 7 Armoured Brigade went in there, looked over their shoulders and said, Where is everybody else? My God, we're stuck here on our own. I am afraid that that is exactly what is happening in Afghanistan.
	I am grateful that Richard Holbrooke, now a responsible special adviser on Afghanistan, is about to announce a civilian surge, finally to catch up with the military one and help the people on the ground. It is important to win over hearts and minds on the ground so that people do not turn against us. I appeal to the Government to listen and relieve the military of the blame being placed on it for the length of time it has taken for us to get to where we are today.
	I question whether where we are today is where the Government wanted us to be six years ago. Did we really want to be handing Iraq over to the United States armed forces rather than to the Iraqis? That cannot be the objective that we set six years agoabsolutely not. This word overwatch is one that I never heard during my long military career. This is another example of the Foreign Secretary proving how out of touch he is with what is actually happening on the ground. I believe that General Andy Salmon is in charge now and he is doing a fantastic job: he is doing a bit of training with the Iraqis, but the emphasis is on going home. The forces have consolidated themselves at the airport and they are doing absolutely nothing else. They are doing no patrolling whatever.
	I hope that the Government will wake up and not waitthis is what I believe their tactics to beuntil we are so close to a general election before allowing a full inquiry that none of the current Ministers will be in office or probably even in Parliament to hear the results of such an important inquiry.
	The 7 Armoured Brigade through to my battalionthe 2nd Battalion The Rifleshad to retreat from Basra palace to Basra airport with their tails between their legs. That is not the way our military forces should be leaving Iraq. It came to the point when the Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki actually said that Basra was being left to the mercy of the militiamen, because we were not providing the necessary assets for the military to do its job properly and a civilian force to back it up.
	I conclude by stating my belief that in our long history of military engagement, Iraq was certainly not our finest hour. That is absolutely no fault of our military; it is wholly the fault of those who work and operate in Whitehall, who failed to plan for the peace. Consequently, the UK's reputation as a reliable and competent country, willing to step forward when others are unable to do so, has actually suffered.
	An inquiry into the war in Iraq will show that the way we fought the war was not the fault of our military but due to the incompetence of this Government in managing the peace. That is why the Government continue to find excuses to delay this important review of what went wrong. I believe there are many lessons to be learned and I am horrified to see that we are repeating the same mistakes in Afghanistan. Until we wake up to that, I am afraid that we are going to be asking questions about what went wrong in Afghanistan in five years' time. That is going to be a horrible place to be.

Several hon. Members: rose

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I inform hon. Members that the winding-up speeches will commence at 3.40 pm, but in the remaining minutes, Members will still be able to catch my eye.

Paul Flynn: We could not have stopped the war in Iraq, as it was predetermined, but what we could and should have done is stopped Britain's involvement in it. I believe that we, as Members of Parliament, should now confront that dreadful mistaken decision.
	The most insistent voices calling for an inquiry are those of the loved ones of the fallen. They want to believe that their loved ones died in a noble cause. Many of them are haunted by the possibility that their loved ones died in vain.
	Perhaps the most appropriate way that we can face up to the results of our decisions would be now to recall and honour the names of the fallen: John Cecil, Llywelyn Evans, Philip Stuart Guy, Sholto Hedenskog, Les Hehir, Ian Seymour, Mark Stratford, Jason Ward, Philip Green, Antony King, Marc Lawrence, Philip West, James Williams, Andrew Wilson, Kevin Barry, David Rhys Williams, Luke Allsopp, Simon Cullingworth, Steven Roberts, Barry Stephen, Stephen Allbutt, David Clarke, Matty Hull, Steve Ballard, Christopher Maddison, Shaun Brierly, Chris Muir, Alexander Tweedie, Karl Shearer, Kelan Turrington, Ian Malone, Christopher Muzvuru, James McCue, Andrew Kelly, Duncan Pritchard, David Shepherd, Leonard Harvey, Simon Hamilton-Jewell, Russell Aston, Paul Long, Simon Miller, Benjamin Hyde, Thomas Keys, James Linton, Jason Smith, David Jones, Matthew Titchener, Colin Wall, Dewi Pritchard, Russell Beeston, John Nightingale, Ian Plank, Ryan Thomas, James Stenner, Norman Patterson, Andrew Craw, Vincent Windsor, Robert Thomson, Richard Ivell, Gordon Gentle, Kristian Gover, Christopher Rayment, Lee O'Callaghan, Marc Ferns, Paul Thomas, Stephen Jones, Marc Taylor, David Lawrence, Kevin McHale, Denise Michelle Rose, Stuart Gray, Paul Lowe, Scott McArdle, Pita Tukutukuwaqa, Paul Connolly, Patrick Marshall, David Stead, Andrew Smith, Paul Pardoel, Gary Nicholson, Richard Brown, Mark Gibson, Robert O'Connor, David Williams, Steven Jones, Mark Dobson, Anthony John Wakefield, Alan Brackenbury, Paul William Didsbury, Richard Shearer, Leon Spicer, Phillip Hewett, Donal Anthony Meade, Stephen Robert Manning, Matthew Bacon, Ken Masters, Chris Hickey, John Jones, Allan Douglas, Gordon Alexander Pritchard, Carl Smith, Richard Holmes, Lee Ellis, Richard Palmer, John Coxen, Darren Chapman, David Dobson, Sarah-Jayne Mulvihill, Paul Collins, Joseva Lewaicei, Adam Morris, Tom Mildinhall, Paul Farrelly, John Johnston Cosby, Matthew Cornish, Samuela Vanua, Stephen Robert Wright, Lee Thornton, Dennis Brady, Tom Tanswell, Jamie Lee Hancock, Lee Hopkins, Sharron Elliott, Ben Nowak, Jason Hylton, Jonathan Hollingsworth, Graham Hesketh, Wayne Rees, Alex Green, Michael Tench, Jonathan Carlos Bracho-Cooke, Luke Daniel Simpson, Daniel Lee Coffey, Johnathon Dany Wysoczan, Kingsman Wilson, Aaron Lincoln, Joanna Yorke Dyer, Kris O'Neill, Eleanor Dlugosz, Adam James Smith, M.L. Powell, Mark J. McLaren, Ben Leaning, Kristen Turton, Alan Joseph Jones, Paul Donnachie, Nick Bateson, Kevin Thompson, Jeremy Brookes, Rodney Wilson, James Cartwright, Paul Harding, John Rigby, Paul Joszko, Scott Kennedy, James Kerr, Edward Vakabua, Ryan Francis, Christopher Read, Matthew Caulwell, Christopher Dunsmore, Peter McFerran, Timothy Darren Flowers, Steve Edwards, Craig Barber, Martin Beard, Chris Casey, Kirk Redpath, Eddie Collins, Mark Stansfield, Sarah Holmes, Lee Fitzsimmons, John Battersby, Duane Barwood, David Kenneth Wilson, Lee Churcher and Ryan Wrathall.
	May they rest in peace.

John Barrett: One other person who has sadly passed away since the time of the decision to go to war and who would have made an eloquent contribution to the debate today is the late Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook. If he is looking down on us, he will be adding his voice to the argument for an inquiry on Iraq. Every speaker today has agreed that there ought to be an inquiry. The only question is exactly when it should be held. There have also been minor concerns expressed over the remit, but every single speaker has agreed that there should be an inquiry. I hope that the Government will take that on board.
	When we listened to the Prime Minister at the time when he was making arguments that we should go to war, he always sounded as if he knew something that we did not. His answer to many questions was, Trust me. We heard at the time that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that 45 minutes' warning was all that it would take before they could be launched.
	There was a drive toward war in the media in the USA, by the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and, to a large degree, in the House, but many questions were unanswered. There was no United Nations mandate. The weapons inspector, Dr. Hans Blix, was asking for more time to conclude his search for those elusive weapons of mass destruction. When a million people marched in the streets, I was proud to be one of them, but in all honesty, at that time I did not believe that we would be listened to. We were not.
	The justification for going to war changed from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to ridding the world of a tyrant and restoring democracy, but many in this place remember the Government saying that Saddam Hussein could stay in power if he gave up his weapons of mass destruction.
	What we need to do now, however, is not just look back but find out the truth of what happenedfind out what took us into that nightmareso that we never repeat the mistake. Time may be a healer, but there was a long period of time during which if either President Bush or the Prime Minister had found their nations under threat and had had to say to the public, or the House of Commons, We are in real danger and we need to go to war again, people would not have believed them. They had lost the trust of their people that they would perform the most basic function of a Government: to keep their country safe. At the heart of the need for an inquiry into the war in Iraq is the need for an examination of the process whereby this country went to war in the first instance.
	We have heard today the names of 179 UK soldiers; 4,260 US personnel have also lost their lives, along with a number of civilians. When I asked the Prime Ministerthe current Prime Ministerat Prime Minister's Question Time how many civilians had died, he said that it was not his job to count them. As has already been said, the financial cost has been estimated at up to 8 billion, and the United States has spent an estimated $3 trillion on this folly. The risks for the future are well known: the world is less safe now than it has ever been, and the middle east is a source of more terrorists and terrorism training.
	The decision to invade Iraq ranks as one of the worst foreign policy errors in recent memory. Its impact on Britainon its international standing and domestic securityhas been more significant than that of any other military act since the second world war. That being the case, I should have thought that the need for a full inquiry was obvious. However, just as we were spun into the war in Iraq, it seems that we are now being spun into a reason for delaying the argument.
	I suspect that both the Government and the Conservative party hope that the inquiry will absolve them of guilt and pin the guilt on the former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who will rightly be judged harshly by history for his role in the decision. However, members of the Cabinet who supported him and members of the Conservative party who backed him in the Lobby must all shoulder their share of the responsibility. While it is important to establish who did what, we do not need the inquiry just to apportion blame or responsibility; we need it to ensure that we learn lessons from the disastrous decisions that were made in the lead-up to the conflict. We committed tens of thousands of troops to the campaign, and 179 were killed. Many more were seriously injured. Thanks to the accounts of former officials and soldiers, we know that planning for a post-invasion Iraq was almost non-existent.
	I have heard it argued that to hold an inquiry while our troops are stationed in Iraq would undermine our soldiers and the sacrifices that they make. The far greater tragedy would be to leave Iraq with nothing learnt from the experience, and their sacrifices. It is for that reason that an inquiry today is so important.

Lynne Jones: I am aware of the time constraint, so I shall be very brief.
	I spoke in the debate on the inquiry a year ago and gave my reasons for feeling that the Butler inquiry and the Intelligence and Security Committee inquiries were completely inadequate, so I shall not rehearse those arguments. What I want to do today is draw the House's attention to an allegation by Ron Suskind, a United States investigative author, in his book The Way of the World.
	Mr. Suskind's information is based on conversations that he had with none other than Sir Richard Dearlove, head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, and his deputy Nigel Inkster. From those conversations, Mr. Suskind learned that one of the United Kingdom's top agents, Michael Shipster, actually metin Amman in 2003, just before the warTahir Jalil Habbush, who was Saddam Hussein's head of intelligence. Apparently, Mr. Habbush was a well-established source of intelligence. I should be interested to know what has happened to him, because he is not one of the members of Saddam Hussein's former regime who have been apprehended or brought to justice in any way. In fact, it has been suggested that he has been protected by western intelligence sources.
	Mr. Habbush told Michael Shipster that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, and that far from seeking to conceal the presence of such weapons, he actually wanted to conceal their absence because he was more concerned about a possible invasion from Iran than about an invasion from the United States. The sources of that informationRichard Dearlove and Nigel Inksterhave queried the exact recollection of those conversations, but they have not denied the substance of the allegation that one of our top agents obtained information that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. It would appear that that intelligence was ignored, and we also know from other sourcessuch as Brian Jones, the former branch head in the Defence Intelligence Staff, and more recently, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice), Carne Ross, who was First Secretary at the United Nations for the Foreign Office until 2004that there are lots of facts in the run-up to the Iraq war that have yet to come to light.
	We should be grateful to Ron Suskind for beginning to shine a light on some of the sources of intelligence that were not drawn to the attention of the House, and were not mentioned in the Butler report or by the Intelligence and Security Committee. I wrote to the Chair of that Committee at the beginning of this month asking for an investigation into this evidence. I have received an acknowledgement. I spoke to one of the assistant Clerks today, who told me that I will receive a reply and gave various reasons why I have not received more than an acknowledgement so far despite the fact that other people have written to the Committee drawing attention to this information.
	It is clear that there were people in the intelligence community who knew the truth: that Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction. Somehow, their views were suppressed and we were given a completely false view of what the intelligence said. For that reason, I believe we need a full inquiry under the kind of conditions that my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle outlined, with witnesses required to give evidence on oath.

Liam Fox: Whether to send armed forces into combat is one of the most important and difficult decisions faced by any Governmentand in the case of Iraq, by Parliament. Whether Members think the decision to go to war in Iraq was right or wrong, members of our armed forces fought, and in some cases died, believing that what they were doing was a just and noble cause. We must remain very sensitive to that, and to the feelings of their families, as we discuss these issues, and I think today's debate has been conducted very much in those terms. Whatever else is in dispute today, the bravery and commitment of our armed forces is not.
	In announcing in his opening speech that an inquiry will be undertaken as soon as practicable after 31 July, the Foreign Secretary admitted that the Government are now being dragged incrementally and unavoidably towards the inevitable will of the House, but the Government are doing this with the least possible grace and in a way that brings the least credit to themselves and reflects least well on the institution of Government. The House will not be sitting on 31 July, so will this inquiry be set up without an announcement to Parliament and without Members having the ability to question the Government, or will we have to wait until October, with the utterly unnecessary delay that that will entail? Tonight, Members have the chance to bring forward what now appears to be the Government's own timetable, and to avoid an unjustifiable delay on this issue.
	A number of matters will need to be considered, among them the scope and remit of the inquiry, which has been widely debated by Members today. If public and parliamentary concerns are to be met, there must be the fullest remit, including the run-up to the war, the conduct of the war, and the preparation for, and conduct of, the post-conflict period. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) said, if these matters have not been addressed when we reach the next general election, they will be subsequently.
	I agree with much of what the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) said in his speech, but I profoundly disagree on one point. He said that he did not wish to see any inquiry into the military. I understand what he meant by that, but I think the House and the country would want to know the military advice that was given and whether it was acceptedand, indeed, whether there was at any point any political interference in decisions made by the military. If that was what he meant, that is entirely fine. I hope that this would be within the scope of an inquiry, because not to consider it would leave a major piece of the jigsaw missing and a major piece of understanding lost to history.
	There are two main reasons why we need to go ahead with this inquiry, the first of which relates to holding the Executive to account. We have heard a number of passionate speeches from hon. Members on both sides of the House, and one of the main charges that has been repeatedly made in this debate is that Tony Blair, as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, deliberately misled the British people in order to take them into a war that they otherwise would not have supportedthere can be no more serious charge. I walked into the Division Lobby after Tony Blair that night and said to him, That was a very impressive speech. I hope you are right. He must also be given every opportunity to be vindicated by an inquiry. Although many people in this country still find it hard to believe that a British Prime Minister would ever behave in the way that has been suggested, we need to restore trust and integrity in our system. Seldom in this House, and certainly never in my 17 years here, has the integrity of a Prime Minister been attacked in the way that it has been today, and it is in everyone's interest to have this cleared up. Several hon. Members, not all of whom are in their places, raised the issue of whether Parliament would have the chance to set up an inquiry of its ownwell, in just a few minutes, that is exactly what this House of Commons will have the chance to do.
	The other main reason we want an inquiry is to learn the lessons. The Foreign Secretary was right to say that we cannot draw a simple parallel between Iraq and Afghanistan, but that does not mean that there is not a huge read-across. On time scales, what have we learned from our experience in Iraq that we can apply to Afghanistan about the speed with which the reconstruction can take place? Iraq was about reconstruction, but Afghanistan is about construction. If Jeffersonian democracy cannot be applied to Iraq successfully in a decade, how long will this take in Afghanistan? Surely it is in everybody's interests for us to be very clear about that.
	What about the reconstruction plans? Was there indeed institutional resistance from the Department for International Development because of the then Secretary of State's attitudes at that time? In a debate in this House, my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) said that
	in a written answer on 15 October last year,
	2002
	the Secretary of State told me that she was not actively discussing a humanitarian strategy for Iraq with the UN, the US or the European Union.
	It is surely not acceptable for the Department for International Development to adopt an ostrich stance, sticking its head in the sand and hoping that war will never happen. There are leaked UN reports of UN contingency planning, but at the end of last month still no funds had been made available for even the basic preparations to begin.[ Official Report, 30 January 2003; Vol. 398, c. 1047.]
	What have we learned about insurgency and counter-insurgency, and how we deal with them? My hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Holloway) made a passionate speech about how we went into Basra believing that we knew what we were doing about counter-insurgency. We believed that our experience from Northern Ireland could be directly translated into the south of Iraq, but we had some big lessons to learn. How exactly will we take those lessons and transfer them into Afghanistan, so that we do not make similar mistakes again? We cannot afford the time to waitthe delayfor such an inquiry to take place, because these things are already happening in real time. We need to ensure that those lessons are learned, for the well-being of our armed forces and of the people in Afghanistan.
	We need to learn these lessons while memories are fresh. The hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice) and my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mr. Baron) made the point graphically that this is not just about the facts on paper, but about the recollections, the pressure, the tone of conversations and the whisperings in corridors about when people knew whatall those things are extremely important.
	We also need to see what lessons we have learned on procurement and the equipment for our armed forces. Many bereaved families who lost loved ones in Iraq will expect the inquiry to address this key issue: why did the Government hold back on authorising the acquisition of sufficient equipment to protect our soldiers? On 9 December 2003, the National Audit Office said:
	Some key shortfalls and lessons were, however, identified. Many arose because of a combination of not having enough operational stock on shelves, enough time to make good the shortfalls and difficulties in ensuring supplies were delivered.
	A report in  The Guardian on 22 January 2004 about Sir Kevin Tebbit's evidence said that the Government did not order crucial equipment for British troops because of
	the fear among ministers that a decision to order 'urgent' operational requirements would provoke anti-war Labour MPs.
	To put the matter in a more personal context, in the inquiry into the circumstances that led to the death of Sergeant Roberts, the coroner, Andrew Walker, said:
	Sergeant Roberts' death was the result of delay and serious failings in the acquisition and support chain that resulted in a significant shortage within his fighting unit of Enhanced Combat Body Armour and none being available for him to wear.
	What lessons do we still need to learn? Why have we had this unnecessary delay when we still have troops fighting in Afghanistan and those lessons may be literally vital for them?
	The Government today have not even pretended to hide behind their previous discredited excuses for delay. It is now a simple, nakedly political delay, designed to prevent the truth from emerging before the general election. The Government should now bow to the inevitable. This House and the country need to learn from what went wrong so that we do not repeat those mistakes in the future. For the sake of the sacrifices already made and the wellbeing of our military and civilians alike, we should have no further delay for blatantly party political reasons. Members on both sides of the House must ask themselves whether they are willing to tolerate naked partisan prevarication or whether they want the truth to emerge.

Bob Ainsworth: My hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West (Paul Flynn), with whom I often disagree, brought home the gravity of the decisions with which we were all confronted back in 2003 by the simple act of reading out the names this afternoon of all of our people who died in the operation in Iraq. Acknowledging that gravity is something that unites the House.
	A couple of other things also unite the House. The first is the need for a full investigation of our involvement in Iraq. That should be comprehensive and should look at the reasons leading up to the decision to invade Iraq. It should also look at the aftermath and the full agenda that applied after the initial invasion in order to try to capture all the lessons that we owe it to peoplemost of all our armed forcesto learn for the future. No hon. Member would disagree with that.
	We can also unite on the ground that we need to be able to say that those people did not die in vain. I do not believe that they did die in vain. I firmly believe that our armed forces have displayed a phenomenal capability and an indomitable spirit in Iraq, and that they have achieved massively. I have heard only one hon. Member this afternoon question whether they will be able to leave Iraq, irrespective of political arguments, with their head held high, having achieved a great deal.
	It is important to acknowledge the improvement that has occurred. The situation in Basra, the area for which we have operational responsibilities, is phenomenally improved. We have had elections, which went off peacefully and in which people were free to vote. I have been able to walk around Basra and people have talked to me about the same kind of things that worry us here in Britainjobs, the economy and the future of their familiesand not the abject fear that dominated them a couple of years ago and throughout the reign of Saddam Hussein.
	If all those things unite us, as I think they do, what divides us? We are divided, simply, on the timing. The Conservatives are trying to saythe right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) said it, in his usual amusing waythat it is an issue of time. He did not allow the facts to stand in the way of a good joke when he put his case. He was determined repeatedly to suggest that we no longer have people actively engaged in Iraq. He said repeatedly that our people are not actively engaged in Iraq. That is not so. There was an attack on the contingency operating base only a couple of weeks ago that killed not a member of the British armed forces but a civilian contractor. There are, albeit at a far lower level, improvised explosive device attacks taking place in the south-east as well as in the rest of the country. Our peoplemore than 4,000 of themare still in danger at this moment. There are still malevolent forces intent on doing them harm.
	It is our dutyI worry about this in my role as Minister for the Armed Forcesto ensure that no complacency creeps in during this final period of our active engagement in Iraq that could possibly lead to unnecessary deaths. I put our people at the forefront of my mind, but there should be no distractions either. It is no good saying that only the military would be distracted. I do not want the top of the shopboth on the military side and the civil service side in the MODto be distracted from the task at hand while we still have people in harm's way. All we are arguing about is the timing. The timetable is not a political one, but is simply a matter of our people still being actively involved in Iraq.

Mark Fisher: The Minister knows that I voted against the war and that I want to see an inquiry. Is there not a way out of the timing problem that he is putting to the House? The inquiry will take some time, so could we not split it? Part of the inquiry could look at what went before the war and at the diplomatic and political issues. We could get on with that now. Nothing in our involvement in Iraq at the moment would stop us considering those pre-war issues. By the time that we are finally out of Iraq, as the Minister says, we could come to the military side. We should get on with the inquiry now, but split it into two halves.

Bob Ainsworth: My hon. Friend has put that argument to me privately and he now puts it to me publicly. I do not believe that there is a case for splitting the inquiry into two halves. We need a group of people to sit down and seriously to consider the issues in the round. They need to consider all the measures that are to be taken. Of course, there are people who want an inquiry in order to score political points, but most people in the House, including those on the Government Front Bench, want an inquiry in order to learn the lessons that we badly need to learn from our involvement in Iraq. Many lessons that will need to be learnt will be appropriate to other engagementsnot least, as has been said, to our involvement in Afghanistan. Not all the issues are transferable, but some of them potentially are. We need the inquiry to be comprehensively involved.
	I do not necessarily think that the date of 31 July is set in stone. The issue that is set in stone is whether or not we have combat troops actively engaged in Iraq. Once that action has ceased, we can move on to what is a very important agenda. However, that agenda is not for today: it is for tomorrow, and for the period after the operation has ceased. I hope that my hon. Friend will see the importance of that approach in the way that he votes this afternoon.
	 Question put ( S tanding Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.
	 The House proceeded to a Division.

Madam Deputy Speaker: I ask the Serjeant at Arms to investigate the delay in the No Lobby.

The House having divided: Ayes 265, Noes 303.

Question accordingly negatived.
	 Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the proposed words be there added.
	 The House divided: Ayes 301, Noes 265.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	 The Deputy Speaker declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to (Standing order No. 31(2)).
	 Resolved,
	That this House notes the Resolutions of this House of 31 October 2006, 11 June 2007 and 25 March 2008 on an Iraq inquiry; recognises the heroic efforts of the British armed forces in Iraq who have a continuing role which this House should be careful not to undermine; further recognises that a time will come when an inquiry is appropriate, but declines to make a proposal for a further inquiry at this time, whilst important operations are underway in Iraq to support the people and government of Iraq.

Business Rates and the Recession

Madam Deputy Speaker: I must inform the House that Mr. Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

Bob Neill: I beg to move,
	That this House notes with concern that the effect of the five per cent. rise in business rates and the end of transitional rate relief will mean soaring bills at a time of deflation and recession; notes the poor take-up of small business rate relief and calls for entitlement to be made automatic in England, as it is in Wales; believes the complex and shrinking Local Authority Business Growth Incentive Scheme should be replaced with genuine incentives for local authorities to promote business growth; further calls for local authorities to have the power to apply local business rate discounts; expresses concern about the effect of the 2010 rates re-valuation on retail premises and urges a review of the re-valuation plans; cautions that local firms will suffer as a result of the Government's business rate rises on empty property, new supplementary rates being imposed with no business say, and retrospective increases in rates on business by ports; and asserts that the Government's policies on business rates are harming local firms during the recession.
	I sometimes think that opening a second half-day debate is a bit like being in the second house in repertory, but I hope that we have a better audience than is sometimes the case in those circumstances.  [ Interruption. ] As the Minister says, the quality sometimes comes on later.
	I am sure, however, that everyone will recognise that this is a topic of the first order of magnitude. It is a topic of such magnitude because business rates are a significant part of the existence, and success or failure, of many parts of our wealth-creating sector. The debate is timely because on 5 April, businesses throughout the country will receive a new set of business rates for the coming year. It is a matter of sadness from any point of view that many businesses will approach that day with considerable trepidation.

Robert Key: Does my hon. Friend recognise that the debate is also timely because it is a quarter day? Up and down the country, thousands of small businesses will have to pay their commercial rents or land rents to landlords. Has he heard of any assistance proposed by the Government to allow those businesses to continue in existence, because if they do not, they will not be able to pay the rates either?

Bob Neill: My hon. Friend makes a good point. The Government's amendment, which I shall come to later, makes a passing and broad-brush reference to certain proposals, but I do not think that they are adequate, as I hope I shall explain. His other extremely important point is the significant impact of business rates on the viability of businesses as a whole. Local firms in particular cite rates, after rent and staff, as their highest overhead. A significant hike in business rates, therefore, can be the difference between survival and prosperity or a business going down the tubes with jobs and prosperity being lost. That is why the effect of the proposed increase in business rates, compounded with the difficulties that many businesses in the small and medium-sized sectors are already suffering, makes the debate so timely. The situation for those people is particularly grave.
	Against that background, it is not surprising that troubling figures are already emerging on the impact of business rate increases on top of other costs of the economic downturn. So far, the Local Government Association reports that four out of five councils have found an increase in empty properties in their town centres. That was before this rate increase happened; 80 per cent. of councils found that businesses are being driven out of our high streets, thanks clearly and firmly to the economic failures of this Government.
	The LGA also pointed out a significant increaseof 56 per cent.in the number of firms having difficulty paying business rates. That is an enormous increase, and if firms are having difficulty paying their business rates, they may well have difficulty in meeting their other obligations. Their viability is in danger. Why? It is because of the failure of the Government to do anything about proper liquidity for genuine and otherwise viable businessesreflected in their failure to adopt the proposals advanced by my party for a proper loan guarantee scheme to get credit flowingand because of the compounding of costs and regulations for those businesses. As a result, businesses are caught in a deadly pincer movement. Some eight out of 10 councils also found an increase in the number of small firms seeking business support. Those three sets of statistics from across the country are grim figures that are a serious indictment of this Government's handling of matters.
	I turn to the impacts of the business rate that we seek to address in our motion, to some of the points where we take issue with the Government, and to areas where we believe that more can be done. The first issue is the increase of 5 per cent. that is due this year. That is especially hard for businesses to bear, because the methodology that the Government have adopted is difficult for many people to understand. It is based on rental values in April 2008, when the inflation index was higher than it is now. Businesses are facing an increase of 5 per cent. in rates when international price indexIPIinflation is down to 0.1 per cent. and we are likely to experience deflation in the coming year. Businesses still have to meet the inflationary increase, which is based on thoroughly out-of-date figures.
	That will make it hard for many small businesses to survive, yet, to revert to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Robert Key) made, the Government have made no suggestions about the methodology, which could be changed and improved. Indeed, we hear the contrary from the Secretary of State, who has not graced us with her presence today. I am sorry that she is not here, because it is always a pleasure to see her and look her straight in the eye, as perhaps I can [Laughter.] If one has a unique selling point, one should not be afraid to flaunt it.
	When taxed with the difficulties that businesses would experience, the Secretary of State's response was,
	it is essential to try to maximise the take from non-domestic rates.[ Official Report, 20 January 2009; Vol. 486, c.608.]
	That gives it all away. The survival of businesses and the viability of local services are not the Government's concern, but using businesses as a cash cow is. Businesses are being clobbered by the increase in non-domestic rates to bail out the Government's waste. Among other things, business rates are being used to subsidise the pointless VAT cut. On what would most people prefer public money to be spent? The Secretary of State's comment gives away the Government's position.
	Businesses are suffering from the further complication this year of the end of transitional relief from the previous 2005 revaluation. It is likely that that will raise another 100 million, taken away from businesses that are already in difficulty. People therefore face a genuine double whammy. Again the Government have done nothingnot even expressed a hint of concernabout the impact of the cliff edge on which many businesses are perched.

Robert Goodwill: Is my hon. Friend aware that the hospitality industry, including pubs and restaurants, is especially affected? This morning, I got an e-mail from Green's restaurant in Whitby, which has experienced a rates increase this year from 2,747 to 5,531. Several businesses in Whitby have contacted me to say that their rates have doubled through the combination of the end of transitional relief and the increase to which my hon. Friend referred.

Bob Neill: My hon. Friend is rightall the surrounding evidence supports his point. Again, it is worth noting that the Local Government Associationa cross-party bodyhas identified exactly the same problem throughout the country and in all sectors as my hon. Friend identified in his constituency in the hospitality sector.
	In the south-east of England, a public house has experienced an increase from 1,800 to 6,600. Elsewhere, different sorts of businesses, even small ones, are experiencing increasesfrom, for example, 10,500 to 31,500. That is a triple increaseimpossible for people to bear under current circumstances. Not only small businesses are affected. Some large organisations in our main town and city centres are also badly affected. One of the large metropolitan councils has reported examples of bills increasing from 37,000 to 123,000, and from 36,000 to 203,000. Such increases are not sustainable. My final example is not even the largest in gross or percentage terms: it is an increase from 567 to 17,096.
	I speak with feeling about that, because as some hon. Members may know, many years ago my mother ran a small shop. When we looked at the situation each year to ensure that things were kept going, we needed a reasonable projection of what the increases might be. However, no one can be expected to keep their head above water in the current climate with those sorts of increases.

Richard Shepherd: When my hon. Friend's mother was running her shop all those years ago, the business rate was a local tax that was set by local authorities. A Conservative Government moved it to the Consolidated Fund and it has now become a substantial plaything in national revenues for distributive policies at the centre and therefore does not reflect the needs of local communities.

Bob Neill: That is entirely right; my hon. Friend makes a valid point. The situation is compounded by the Government's current proposals, which left this House only a matter of weeks ago, to add a supplementary business rate, to which I shall return. To deal with my hon. Friend's point, I would like the power to be given back to local authorities to levy a discount on the business rate under those circumstances. We floated that idea during the passage of the Business Rate Supplements Bill, but I regret to say that the Government rejected it. Such a power is exactly the sort of local discretion that we ought to restore to the system, so it is regrettable that the opportunity was not taken.

Lorely Burt: I am listening with great interest and sympathy to the hon. Gentleman. However, rather than just giving local authorities the ability to levy a discount, why would he not go the whole hog and restore their ability to levy the local business rate, as suggested by the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd)? Surely local authorities must know much better both how able local businesses are to withstand the payments and what sort of services they need.

Bob Neill: As many hon. Members will know, my party recently published a policy document called Control Shift, in which we put forward a proposal to encourage local authorities to attract new business by giving them a stake in the revenue that new businesses bringenabling them to keep the increase in council tax from attracting new businesses, without its being lost through equalisation, for a period of six years. That is an important point that we need to consider.
	I might add that it is ironic that we should be making that positive proposal to enable local councils when the Government have been slashing the support for business growth that they used to give through the local authorities business growth incentiveLABGIwhich has essentially been emasculated for want of financial support from the Treasury. I may return to that point, which shows a clear contrast between the approach taken by the Government and that taken by the Opposition on support for businesses through local authorities.
	The overall situation is a double whammy, with a 5 per cent. increase based on outdated methodology and data, and the loss of the transitional relief, as well as those other matters to which we have referred. There is also concern about the impact on particular sectors. It is worth remembering that the retail sector is particularly likely to be hit in the current situation, because at the time of the revaluation data, which go back to April 2008, retail rentals were at a historically high level and the market was rather distorted. Since then, they have fallen back and come closer into line with rentals in other sectors, which is also closer to the position in the previous revaluation, in 2003. Small shops are therefore likely to be suffering particularly badly from the percentage increase.
	That is one sector that is being hit, but it is not the only one. There is also the whole question of small businesses, which are always particularly vulnerable to financial pressures. Equally, small businesses are particularly important to the economy, because they are the seedcorn of many others. I have always thought that when Napoleon called us a nation of shopkeepers he paid us a considerable compliment about the strength of entrepreneurialism and individual initiative that enabled this country to beat him at the end of the day. We therefore disregard small business at our great peril. It is particularly troubling, therefore, that so many businesses are in difficultly.
	In its current form, the small business rate relief scheme, which was introduced in 2005, involves businesses making an application. That brings us back to an experience that many of us will have had in dealing with small business: at the end of the day, when people have been working extremely long hours, the more form filling, the more hassle, the more paperwork there is to do, the harder it gets, so the forms and applications are more likely to be shoved to one side as something that will have to be dealt with later. The first matterof actually getting the money over the counter and through the tillshas to be dealt with first.

Brian Binley: Has my hon. Friend heard the reports that I have regarding the small business rate reliefthat many local authorities are simply not taking steps to advise small businesses of their ability to apply? In that respect, they are not helping with the processes small businesses have to go through at this difficult time.

Bob Neill: To be fair to local authorities, I think that the picture varies, but the important point is that at the moment the system creates a burden for the individual businessman or woman and for the local authority. It is a burden for the business person who has to make the application; it is a burden for the local authority ifas, to be fair, many dothey seek to advertise what is available, which entails some costs. I commend certain local authoritiesfor example, Conservative-controlled Birmingham city council has sent letters to all potentially eligible businesses and dealt with some 6,000 applications; Harrow council, which also happens to be Conservative, is joint sponsoring advice days; and there are many others. The evidence shows a very wide variation in the take-up: the national figure is about 60 per cent., but in some areas in the north-east it goes up to about 80-odd per cent., while in some areas of the north-west, on the other side of the Pennines, it goes down to the mid-20s a bizarre state of affairs.
	The solution could be achieved very easily by adopting the measures proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff) in his excellent private Member's Bill, which was debated in the House just a couple of weeks ago, and making the relief automatic. I know that the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Khan), who was present on that occasion, made charitable and sympathetic noises in his helpful way, but we have not seen any action. It would not take long for the Government to act, and I sincerely hope that they will. My hon. Friend showed good faith in not pressing his Bill, but we now expect the Government to show some good faith and take his measure swiftly on board.

David Kidney: When I last asked a parliamentary question on this subject, the Local Government Association got in touch with me to provide examples of good practice, some of which the hon. Gentleman has just mentioned. Does he think there is a greater role for the LGA to help to ensure that all local authorities do as well as the best in trying to drive up take-up of this relief?

Bob Neill: I think the LGA is very willing to help and it has encouraged good practice. It also supported my hon. Friend's Bill, which would have made the relief automaticit would have taken good practice to its logical conclusion and rolled it out nationwide, while also having the advantage of lifting the burden not only on businesses but on local authorities, which would not have had to use their current funding to encourage take-up and could have used it to provide other means of business support. Adopting my hon. Friend's Bill would therefore be a win-win situation, which is why I hope the Government will move swiftly to do so.

John Mann: In the interim, what advice would the hon. Gentleman give to councils or local authorities of all parties that have failed to act in the way that those he highlighted have done?

Bob Neill: It is never too late to follow good practice, and I hope that all local authorities will. It really is as simple as that.
	I have been talking about the small business sector, which suffers particular difficulties, but relief on empty properties is another important issue. The reduction in the relief available has caused difficulties in many sectors. We could understand the concern if it were thought that properties were being deliberately left empty, but that is not the case. The difficulty that the economic downturn creates is that, invariably and inevitably in these economic circumstances, the void period that arises between one letting finishingsometimes, I regret to say, because the business previously in the premises has ceased tradingand another business taking over is likely to be longer, because there is less demand. To clobber the owners at that stage seems unjust and is, I think, an unforeseen consequence of the Government's approach. That could be rectified, however.
	There is concern about the growth in the number of empty shops on the high street. Again, the LGA has been doing its best. Only two or three weeks ago, it announced an initiative on good practice that can be rolled out to try to encourage other means of at least getting vacant units in use, having something in shop windows and having some activity, rather than the whitewashed windows that we see all too often. Again, that is an area where there has been a failure to support business.
	Another sector experiencing difficulty is the ports, which are important. The Minister for Local Government and I have talked about the ports on a number of occasions in recent times, and I am sorry that his eyes look as if they might glaze over, but I make no apology for returning to the subject because the treatment of those businesses is shameful. Also, I make no apology for saying to him that until he and his colleagues wake up and take notice of what is happening in the ports, we will return to these matters again and again.
	A thoroughly needless step has been embarked on: a retrospective revaluation of port tax, which is driving firms in the ports out of business and threatening the viability of a key sector of the British economy. This all stems from the inadequacy of a Government agency. I know that the Minister has spoken to operators and businesses in the ports, as have I and a number of hon. Members. The message from the ports sector, which I have received very clearly, is that everybody accepts the need to pay a fair share in rates. There is no problem with rationalisation of the previous systemthe cumuloby which rates were paid.
	For those Members who have not followed the issue, I should explain that previously businesses within the 55 registered ports in effect paid their rates via the operator; some were paid over in total by the operator. A decision was taken that led to their being rated as separate hereditamentsseparate rateable units. So far, all well and good, but the incompetence and delay shown by the Valuation Office Agency in drawing up new lists meant that those lists were not available until this year.
	As I recall, that is a number of years on from when the lists should have been made available. The consequence has been a massive retrospective increase in the cost of rates, backdated to 2005, when the lists should have been brought into being. The inadequacy and bad management of the VOA meant that firms were not asked to fork out for those changed rates until this yearthree years after the event.

Julian Brazier: My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. Is he aware that a delegation of shipping and shipping-related companies is going to the Department for Transport tomorrow to tell Ministers there that, because of that and the disgraceful swingeing and unjustified increases in light dues, they are thinking of pulling out of this country altogether? The effect of that would be a huge increase in traffic through Rotterdam, and hence by lorry through Dover, with all sorts of consequences for regional policy, congestion in the south-east and so on.

Bob Neill: I am aware of that as it has been raised by my hon. Friend and a number of Members who sit on the Labour Benches, as well as by Members from all other parties. It is not a purely partisan matter, so it is all the more surprising that we have met with such a stonewalling response from the Department for Communities and Local Government.
	It is worth examining these matters in a little more detail, because they clearly show the inadequacy of the Government's approach. Overall, there will be a very significant increase in the burden that the ports sector will have to bear. Not only is it retrospective, but it follows an increase that was imposed with no impact assessment, no consultation and no assessment of the effect on the wider economy. Moreover, the policy contravenes the Treasury's own guidance on retrospective taxation. That information does not come from me; all of it was obtained by hon. Members in answers to questions that they had asked the Government. The Government have breached their own rules.
	Against that background, it is particularly invidious to use retrospective taxation. There are clear parameters for the use of retrospective taxation: it should be used very rarely, to preserve revenue and other significant interests. As there was never any assessment of the amount of revenue that might be raised, no one knew what there was to preserve. We have had enough stealth taxes from this Government in the past; now we have a backdated stealth tax as well, and that makes their action doubly invidious.
	The Humber Docks Rating Group, which has met a number of Members, estimates that some 600 businesses could be affected. Firms are already going under. Three have gone under so far, and, although they are small firms, I believe that between 60 and 100 jobs have been lost. A number of other businesses have reported that they are in difficultyand this is not just affecting the small business sector; it is affecting large multinationals as well. At a recent meeting at the House of Commons, DFDS Seaways made it clear through its UK managing director that unless the treatment of the ports sector changed, it would have to reconsider its investment and operations in the United Kingdom.
	That underlines the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier). This is an area in which the United Kingdom's competitiveness is at stake. Organisations such as DFDS Seaways will simply relocate their operations in Europein Rotterdamand, as my hon. Friend pointed out, the transhipments will then come by road, which will have bad consequences for the environment. This is the worst example that one could possibly imagine of the Government's lack of a joined-up policy.

Mark Field: While I entirely agree with all the concerns that my hon. Friend has expressed about retrospection, may I ask him what our party's policy would be for the period between 2005 and the present day, given that we obviously want to help the ports as much as we can?

Bob Neill: What we have said is that we should postpone action so that we maintain the 2005 values until 2010. That would give the businesses a breathing space, and would enable the revaluation to be carried out on a proper basis with consultation, an impact assessment and a quantification of the revenue. That would enable the businesseswhich know that there will inevitably have to be some uplift in their ratesto plan properly. The key point is that it was impossible for them to plan properly in this instance, because they were given no notice. In a number of cases, particularly at the smaller end of the scale, the amount demanded in back rates exceeded the annual turnover of the business. In order to pay the rates that will fall due in the coming week, businesses will technically be trading insolvent.
	Apart from one of the blandest letters that I have ever seen, from the Insolvency Service, the Government have been able to produce no defence. When the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell)who I am delighted to see is presentinitiated a debate in Westminster Hall, the Minister, as ever, put up a stalwart defence of the Government's position, but I felt he was a bit like General Custer at Little Big Horn. The only difference, apart from the fact that General Custer had long flowing locks, was that the Minister was at least able to walk away at the end of the day. The fact is, however, that he was surrounded, and there was no one to support him because the case was unanswerable.
	When I was a barrister, I occasionally had to tell clients that they did not have a case. The Government are in exactly the same position. Their case is roughly the same as that of a defendant when his fingerprints have been identified, there is a DNA sample, he has signed a confession, and the Archbishop of Canterbury was an eye-witness. They have been caught bang to rights, and the sooner they accept that and move in the direction that has been suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field), the better. Otherwise, the ports sector in this country is at real risk of being dealt long-term damage.

John Healey: I understand why the hon. Gentleman might want to have a dry run of a full debate we will have on this subject next week, but does he not accept that this is not, as he is trying to say, something new for ports? Does he not accept that although 500 or so businesses in ports are newly listed and liable to pay business rates, three times that number were already paying business rates separately before this period? Will he not also accept that what is new is the unprecedented period of eight years to pay these backdated, legally established tax liabilities, which we are proposing and he is opposing?

Bob Neill: The Minister is game as ever, but he does not address the key points. The issue of the separate rating is not of itself the problem. What is new is the retrospective revaluation element; that is the bit the Government have not been able to address.

John Healey: It is not new; it is an established part of the ratings systemit has been so in this period, and it was in the last period. More firms outside the ports are in the same position, because that is the way the rates system works, and the period we are allowing for payment will also help those businesses, especially in the current economic circumstances. There is nothing special about the position of these ports businesses, except that they are the subject of a review that the Valuation Office Agency has undertaken. It arguably could have done so more quickly, and it has conceded that point.

Bob Neill: I know the Minister has his back to the wall, but, if I may say so, he really is struggling a bit. It is not, I hope, normal practice in the valuation business for changes to be carried out retrospectively without impact assessments and without consultation. If it is, that says a lot about those ultimately responsible for the VOAand the ultimate responsibility lies, of course, with Ministers.
	What is special about the ports sector is that it is particularly vulnerable to this measure, and firms are starting to go out of business. Nothing the Government can say will get them off the hook on this, and I regret that the Minister is, perhaps on orders from above, still digging himself into this position. That follows on from the response of the Department to the House of Lords debate last week, where the Government position was condemned by their lordships, and the next day the Government issued a statement saying, Nothing has changed, and we carry on as before. This Government are turning into a modern-day version of the Bourbons, as that is an attitude we could have expected from Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI in Versailles. The only difference is that the Government are saying, You can have eight years to eat the cake, but what they do not understand is that the cake will choke the businesses in the interim. That is why this is wrong. The Government have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
	If we add all these things together, we are left with a catalogue of failure. I have referred to supplementary business rates, but there is also the winding down of the local authority business growth incentivesLABGIscheme. There have been wholly inadequate responses from the Government.

John Mann: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Bob Neill: Yes I will, although I think I have been fairly generous.

John Mann: Well, in that case I suppose I should thank the hon. Gentleman for his generosity. On the LABGI scheme, does he agree it is reprehensible that some local authorities have this money in the coffers and are spending it on things other than what they should? One local authority chose in its budget for the next year to spend the entire amount over the last three years815,000on job evaluation, rather than on assisting local business growth.

Bob Neill: What is most reprehensible is that the Treasury cut the amount of funding available for LABGI by such an enormous amount, but that was not mentioned.
	Having now dealt with LABGI, I will move on, if I may, to

John Mann: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Bob Neill: I have been more than generous in giving way to the hon. Gentleman, so I shall not do so again nowhe is not going to get away with this again.

John Mann: rose

Bob Neill: I do not want the hon. Gentleman to get stuck in the position he is currently in, as he might hurt himself. I have given a very clear answer. I am more than happy to encourage all local authorities to work seriously together, and I hope they will, but there is no point in masking where the real responsibility lies here: the Government have emasculated a scheme that could otherwise have worked well, and then sought to ignore what my party were trying to put in its place.

John Mann: rose

Bob Neill: The hon. Gentleman has had two bites at the cherry, which is more than generous. I do not think I am usually difficult about giving way to hon. Members, but I am not going to have a two-way conversation with him, as that might get boring.  [Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Two-way conversations from sedentary positions are not just boring; they are not allowed in the House. I have half an eye on the clock, and as a lot of hon. Members are seeking to catch my eye, perhaps we could press on with the debate.

Bob Neill: I am happy to do that, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I have deliberately sought to take as many interventions as I can, in an effort to assist hon. Members in this debate.
	Against the background that I have outlined, the Government have failed to deliver real assistance to small businesses. As we alluded to in our motion, there has been a smokescreen of measures that have never been delivered on the ground. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Prisk) is going to refer to those in some detail when he winds up. No real action has been taken, there has been no proper loan guarantee scheme, and we have not had the things that would really make a difference to business. The Government have not introduced anything that would provide a real incentive for businesses to come to a local authority area, such as the incentive scheme that we propose; nor have they given local authorities the ability to offer discounts to help businesses in trouble. Those things would really help business in this difficult time, but the Government ignore all those real actions; instead, there is a smokescreen of spin and a degree of reluctance to acknowledge reality. It does make one think that this Government are now firmly stuck in the bunkerMinisters are moving phantom armies around in Ukraine, while the threat to businesses is knocking on the door of Whitehall. That is the reality: the Government have lost touch on this issue, and business deserves better.

John Healey: I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from House to the end of the Question and add:
	notes that the Government has recognised the problems that many businesses face and is committed to do all it can to help them through these testing times; recognises the action the Government has taken to give targeted support to businesses including a 20 billion working capital scheme, an aim to pay Government suppliers within 10 days, a cut in the main rate of value added tax to 15 per cent., a deferral in the increase in the small companies' rate of corporation tax, free business health checks, more than 100 million towards debt advice, the HM Revenue and Customs Time to Pay scheme benefiting 93,000 firms by deferring 1.6 billion in tax, and extension of Empty Property Relief; believes the Government's commitment to the annual Retail Price Index cap means that there has been no real terms increase in business rates since 1990; welcomes the Small Business Rate Relief scheme benefiting 392,000 businesses by 260 million in 2007-08; recognises that funding of almost 1 billion since 2005-06 has been provided through the Local Authority Business Growth Incentive scheme; further supports fairness in the system that ensures that properties are revalued every five years with transitional relief to phase in significant increases in bills from revaluation; and acknowledges help provided for businesses, including in ports, receiving unexpected and significant backdated rates bills by introducing an unprecedented eight years to pay, as part of a package of measures that ensures through the rates system there is certainly, fairness and appropriate relief for businesses..
	This is an important and timely debate on business rate taxation. It is also an interesting one, because what we have just heard from the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), the Conservative Front-Bench spokesman, is a strong case for a fiscal stimulus and tax support. On that basis, I am glad that he is part of what is now an inter-party international consensus that knows that Government action is needed to slow the global downturn, to speed up the chances of recovery and to regulate better the international financial system for the future. I am glad that he also seems to know that Governments must act to help families and firms through this recession, even ifI have to say thisthe shadow Chancellor and his party's leader do not appreciate that.
	As the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have made clearthis is where the real difference between the two sides of this House lieswe will take whatever action is needed to see us through the credit crunch. We will do what it takes, as we have done, to prevent the [Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. May I repeat what I said earlier? If anybody wishes to intervene, it is much better for the structure of the debate and for general order if they intervene from a standing position in the normal way, rather than chunter from a sedentary position.

John Healey: I was trying to take the chuntering from the Opposition Front-Bench team seriously, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am not sure how they can say that no action has been taken and everything is simply spin, given that we stepped in to prevent the collapse of the banking system. We did so because it is important to savers, pensioners, householders and mortgage payersall of usand businesses that we have a banking system in which banks do not go bust and which gets back as quickly as possible to the proper of business of banking: lending to support the British economy, lending to support firms and lending to support families. Similarly, I should mention the help that we have given to try to keep companies in business, people in work and families in their homes, and the action that we are now taking to try to ensure a proper international system of regulation in order to cut the risks of such a meltdown in the global financial system in the future.

Julian Brazier: What would the Minister say to Ahlmark Shipping (UK) Ltd, which contacted me this morning to say that it had received a backdated rate demand for 750,000? Nobody from the Valuation Office Agency, or indeed anyone else, approached the company about this new system of paying direct ratesit already had a negotiated cumulo contract with its port supplier. The first that the company heard about this was in March 2008. It now faces a bill for the sum that I mentioned and it says that it has no chance of recovering those costs from its customers. It states that this
	will make our company insolvent with job losses inevitable.

John Healey: If the business is faced with such a business tax demand, it should have been paying business taxes a good deal earlier than 2005. I would also say that businesses in the same portpossibly ones in direct competition with the one that the hon. Gentleman mentionshave been paying business taxes on their own account during that period. Finally, I would say that the Opposition should not vote down the measures that we will seek to put in place next week that will give that firm and others in a similar position eight years to pay the backdated business rates that they are now legally liable to pay.

Richard Shepherd: The Minister said that the stabilisation of the banks is important, and I am sure that everyone agrees. But we are seeing, especially in the west midlands, rapidly rising unemployment. It is now 2 million and may be 3 million by the end of this year. Despite that, the Government are persisting with increasing the taxes on business and therefore harming the prospects for jobs. That is what the uniform business rate is doing now, and surely the Minister's argument requires some balance to try to get the equation right.

John Healey: Well, that is another argument from the Opposition for a fiscal stimulus. It also overlooks the fact that we have put in place the VAT cut, and the Office for National Statistics suggests that 70 per cent. of the cut has been passed through into prices. Other independent commentators have said that it is the equivalent of a 1 per cent. interest cut. The hon. Gentleman also overlooks the fact that in the pre-Budget report the Chancellor said that he would not proceed with the increase in the small companies rate that was scheduled.

Bob Neill: Is the Minister really saying that he thinks that the VAT cut has worked? Does he think that many small businesses have found it possible to make the reduction in VAT given the administrative costs? Would it not have been simpler and more direct to have helped them through the rates?

John Healey: It is not what I say: the Office for National Statistics has said that the VAT reduction has been passed through to consumers in some 70 per cent. of prices. The independent Institute for Fiscal Studies says that the VAT cut has had the same effect as a 1 per cent. interest rate cut. Goldman Sachs has said:
	The VAT cut appears to have had a clear positive impact.

Richard Shepherd: The problem is clearly focused in small businesses, and many of my hon. Friends are very concerned about that, but it is also much wider on the high street. Some big chains are in marginal trading positions now, and they are big sources of employment. The Government will lose revenue and coststhrough social securitywill rise. Would it not be better to stabilise matters by retaining the situation as it was before all these proposals started to increase the burden on employment?

John Healey: As the House would expect, we are in close contact with businesses and have detailed discussions with those from all sectors and all parts of the country. I am conscious of the particular pressures in which business rates have played a part. I said earlier that the Prime Minister and Chancellor have made it clear that during this period of unprecedented economic downturn and pressure, we are prepared to take whatever action is needed to try help business and the economy through it.

Charles Hendry: Will the Minister also look into the case of my constituent, Mr. Thompson, who runs one of the many excellent village pubs in my constituency, the Anchor Inn in Hartfield? Even though the rateable value of his pub has gone down this year, the rates payable have gone up from 10,622 to 16,967, an increase of 60 per cent. Will the Minister meet Mr. Thompson and others to explain to them how, in these incredibly difficult times, they are expected to find that sort of money, which represents a 600 a month increase in the amount that they have to pay in business rates?

John Healey: My diary secretary hates it when I come to these debates. I will not meet the hon. Gentleman's constituent, but I will meet the hon. Gentleman if he wants to run through the details of the case with his constituent beforehand. Having heard only what the hon. Gentleman has outlined, it is difficult for me to comment on that situation. It might be a product of the end of the transitional relief, which has dampened the increases in the business rates that his constituent was liable to pay for the past four years. We legislated for that scheme and put it in place before the 2005 ratings list came into operation, so that his constituent and any other of the 1.7 million businesses in Britain would knowbecause of that provision and other stable features in the systemtheir likely rates liability for each of the five years of the ratings list. When one is running a business, advance knowledge of a potentially significant element of overheads does not mean that the liability to pay changes, but that the ability to plan and to try to manage those pressures is improved.

Julian Brazier: That, of course, is precisely what has not happened in the case of companies such as Ahlmark Shipping and other companies subject to port rating. They were given no notice of any kind. Many renegotiated their rent, sometimes on contracts that ran five or even as many as 30 years ahead, on the basis of the existing cumulo arrangement. Will the Minister at least accept that even if the logic of his argument is correctI do not accept that it isrecalculating those payments cannot then be a private matter between the port employer and the port tenant? Often, those employers who have benefited, who, in many cases, were warned about the changes when their tenants were not, are competing against their tenants who have warehouses on a different rating.

John Healey: This debate is in danger of foreshadowing a debate that we are likely to have in the Chamber next week. In general terms, I do not accept that the separate listing and liability for business rates for some of those businesses came completely out of the blue for three reasons. First, we made it clear well before 2005 that we intended to end the system of prescription. Secondly, a large numbermore than 1,500of businesses based in ports were already paying business rates on their own account and not through the port operator before the listing period started. Thirdly, although I accept that communication from the Valuation Office Agency could and should have been better and that it should have been distributed more quickly, information about the ports review was disseminated widely across the sector from an early stage in the process.

John Mann: May I say how delighted I am to hear my right hon. Friend reiterate that the Government will do whatever is necessary? Does he agree that it is necessary to ensure that the LABGIor local authority business growth incentive schememoney is not spent on other causes? For example, one local authority has chosen to put 815,000three years' moneyinto job evaluation rather than making it available to local businesses through its budget for the next year. Will the Minister do something about that to ensure that that money, which is earmarked for businesses, goes to local businesses?

John Healey: The LABGI schemeto use a rather ugly and awkward acronymwas a three-year scheme from the outset. The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst misleads the House when he says that the amount for the scheme has been slashed [ Interruption. ]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The word misleads is not a word that we like to use in the Chamber. Perhaps the Minister would care to withdraw it.

John Healey: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I do not wish to accuse the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst of misleading the House, so of course I withdraw that word. However, he is mistaken if he describes it as a scheme that has had its funding from the Treasury slashed. I say that because I was the Treasury Minister responsible for introducing it. I devised and funded it as a three-year scheme: over the three years, almost 1 billion has been made available as a reward to local authorities that played a part in helping businesses in their area to grow.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) makes a really important point. The money is a reward and a recognition, yes, but it is also an encouragement and an incentive to local authorities to do more to support their business base, and to bring jobs and long-term prosperity to their local economy. That is the sort of investment and activity that we wish to encourage local authorities to increase, but the Governmentand especially my Departmenthave a principle to which we hold quite strongly. We believe that, where possible, we should allow local authorities to take decisions for themselves about how best to spend their money and about what is best for their area.

John Mann: I thank the Minister for that answer and for giving way again, but does he understand the anger of the very large number of business people in my constituency who have contacted me in the past few days? They have been astonished to find that Bassetlaw council has earmarked the LAGBI money in its budget for next year for job evaluation, and not towards giving local businesses the support that they currently need.

John Healey: I can understand the reaction of business people in Bassetlaw. If what my hon. Friend says about his council's use of the money is correct, that places it out of step with the mainstream of councils that receive LAGBI money. Most councils see the reason for the money and understand its value, and they have been able to use it to support local jobs and businesses, particularly during this difficult time when the economy is on a downturn and businesses are under new pressure.
	We are conscious of the pressures on business at present, and of the pressures that business rates can produce, but I remind the House that rating systems of one type or another have been in place in this country for more than 400 years. The present system is central to providing the revenues that support those local government servicessuch as education, housing, waste, social services and planningthat benefit us all.
	This year, business rates should raise around 20 billionall of which, I point out to the hon. Member for Wealden (Mr. Hendry), is redistributed to local authorities, rather than going into central coffers or the tax pool.

Richard Shepherd: Looking around the House, I do not see many hon. Membersif anywho were present when this measure went through. The key word is uniform, and the distinction is that this is now a national taxation at the command of central Government. As a result, it does not reflect the two important features of rates that have been key for all their 400 yearsless 20 yearsof history. That is, that the money was at the disposal of local authorities to compensate for the nature of business in their areas, and that it therefore flowed to those areas around the countrymarket towns, for examplethat encouraged business. This uniform thing merely makes the tax divisive across the country, and thus very different by nature from what preceded it.

John Healey: I am interested in the common cause that the hon. Gentleman is making with the Liberal Front-Bench team. Setting the business rate nationally is a way of making sure that the revenues available are redistributed fairly, particularly to poorer areas. It also ensures that the system itself is fair in that, when a local economy or area has relatively few businesses, the ones that do exist are not disadvantaged by having to pay a higher rate. The business rate system we have today is a way of ensuring in a number of waysnot just that onethat there is a fair system of taxation for all businesses in all areas.

Mark Todd: While my right hon. Friend is right in saying that this taxation system is not particularly new, what is relatively new is the early imposition of business rates on empty property, following the Barker review. In times such as these, no sane property owner will needlessly hold on to empty property, so although the focused support for smaller businesses is welcome, will my right hon. Friend review the level at which that assistance comes into play? In my area, companies are struggling to let properties while desperately trying to meet business rate demands they cannot cover.

John Healey: I shall make sure that my hon. Friends at the Treasury take that as a Budget representation from my hon. Friend. I am glad he welcomes the change that we shall be making from April this year, which means that there will be a higher threshold and thus no new liability to pay on probably about 70 per cent. of empty properties. He urges us to review the operation of the scheme and we shall of course do so once it is in place.
	I turn again briefly to the questions about the business rate system as I think it would be useful for the House to understand how we have tried to design it so that it is fairer for businessesI have mentioned the benefit of a nationally set rate in that regard. The system is based on the hypothetical rate that an occupant would pay to use a property. If a property is in a better location or provides better amenities, the rent that someone may be willing to pay will be greater and the rateable value and the rates that flow from that are, therefore, also greater.
	The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst talked about the multiplier. He is right: the actual amount a business pays in business rates is calculated as a function of both the rateable value and the multiplier. Contrary to the assertion that through the business rate system, business is a cash cow for Government funding, or even local government funding, business rates rise only by the rate of inflation. Each year since 1990, and consistently since 1997, the rates have risen only in line with inflation. That has meant that since 1997 the proportion of local government funding from business rates has dropped from about 25 to 21 per cent.
	Before anyone from the Opposition jumps to their feet, it is not the case that the proportion of the council tax contribution to council funding has risen in a mirror image. Investment from central Government has increased above inflation every year since 1997, but the proportion of local government funding from council tax has been roughly the same over the past decade.

Mark Prisk: The Minister is right to point out the importance of the retail prices index. If the RPI is negative this September, will the Government commit to reducing business rates for the coming year?

John Healey: As the system stands, that would be the effect on the business rates multiplier for the following year, if RPI is negative in September. The multiplier is capped each year by RPIinflation. Through the cap and by setting rateable values for a five-year period, we can give businesses certainty about the level of their business rate liability.
	In addition, where we think there is a strong case, we have been ready to introduce reliefs to make the system fairer still. There are now mandatory reliefs for charities and community amateur sports clubs of at least 80 per cent., which last year were worth almost 800 million to those bodies. We introduced rural rates relief, which has been available since 1998. Pubs and post offices in rural areas can get 50 per cent. rate relief. I have to say that the Conservative party opposed the legislation that introduced that relief.

Peter Luff: indicated dissent.

John Healey: The hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but his party voted against the Second Reading and the Third Reading of the legislation that brought in that measure. However, he is, I am pleased to say, a strong advocate for that relief, as is the Conservative party now. According to the last figures, that relief is worth about 260 million to nearly 400,000 small businesses. So there is relief in the business rates system, particularly for small firms, where there is a good, principled case for it.

Peter Luff: Of course, the Minister is being a bit tendentious. We opposed the Bill for the bad things that it did. The relief provisions were a good thing in it that we always supported, so he was not right to say what he did. The automatic rate relief was always supported by Opposition Members. I support it, and I am glad that the Government embrace it. I have had constructive discussions on making that relief automatic in my private Member's Bill. He has indicated that he is in constructive discussion on the issue with other parts of Government. I have now examined all the arguments against making it automatic, and none of them has any validity. May I join in pressing him to make Budget representations to the Chancellor, and ask him to make sure that automaticity forms a part of the Budget measures next month?

John Healey: I shall personally forward a copy of the  Official Report to the Chancellor tomorrow, and I shall highlight the hon. Gentleman's contribution with my doughty yellow marker pen, which I have here. Let me mention revaluation, because the Conservative Front-Bench spokesman raised the subject. It is a major part of the rating systemand, I would argue, of the fairness in that system. That fairness comes from the regular five-yearly revaluations.

Andrew Selous: Will the Minister give way briefly on the issue of fairness?

John Healey: Of course.

Andrew Selous: I am grateful. The Minister has been extremely generous in giving way today; I think that we all appreciate that. Last week, I was approached by someone whose business operates from small, one-storey premises. It is charged the same business rates as a much larger, two-storey building on the other side of the road. He has been in contact with the Valuation Office Agency, which said that it would take him to court, before offering him a payment plan. He has been told that it will cost him about 800 to challenge the decision. Is that fair? What sort of help can the Minister offer to businesses in that situation that are being treated unfairly? There does not seem to be equity in some cases.

John Healey: I think that it is reasonable that the hon. Gentleman's constituent should question the Valuation Office Agency's rating valuation. If his constituent is still contesting the view that the agency takes, he has the right to challenge it. He has the right to take the case to a tribunal to have it properly adjudicated. I would encourage the hon. Gentleman to encourage his constituent to do just that, as is his right. The Valuation Office Agency is there to deal with people's questions or challenges in the first instance, but the independent tribunal is there to adjudicate between the assessment made by the agency and the evidence that people such as his constituent produce.
	Let me return to revaluation. It ensures that businesses contribute at a level that is based on up-to-date information. The next revaluation is due to take effect from 1 April 2010. The revaluation will not raise extra business rates revenue; that is an important protection for all businesses. Some rates bills will rise and some will fall after the revaluation, but the average national rates bill for businesses will change only by inflation. For those rate payers who face big increases at the 2010 revaluation, we will introduce transitional arrangements, so that we phase in those increases. We plan to consult later this year on the design of those transitional arrangements, which will substantially benefit business in the new rating list period.

Bob Neill: I am grateful to the Minister for giving that indication. Will he confirm that the transitional arrangements will be, at the very least, no less generous to businesses than the current arrangements, and will he consider looking again at the methodology for calculating the revaluation?

John Healey: I can confirm that we are considering the appropriate methodology at the moment. I can further confirm that we aim to publish the proposals for consultation later this summer. I look forward to debating them, and to hearing the hon. Gentleman's representations on them.
	Let me move on briefly. I said earlier that we were very conscious of the economic pressures on business at presentthe pressures that the international credit crunch and the economic slowdown are having. That is why, contrary to the argument that we heard earlier, there is a range of practical measures in place that is offering real help to businesses, particularly to small firms, in the face of not just a credit crunch, but a crunch of confidence, demand and, increasingly, jobs. Not to act, as independent commentators and some of the specialists have said, is likely in the long run to cost us more than the action that we are taking.
	To help cash-flow pressures from business taxes, those measures include putting in place a mechanism for deferring tax payments. Since it was announced in the pre-Budget report, HMRC has done so for 93,000 businesses at a value of 1.6 billion. The measures include help to secure finance for small and medium-sized enterprises through the Government enterprise finance guarantee. That enables banks to provide an initial 1.3 billion of lending to SMEs that have viable business plans but find that their normal commercial sources of support may have been choked off in the current circumstances. So far 26 lenders have signed up to the scheme and 20 of those lenders have already made offers; 1,300 businesses have been registered as eligible for support, and support to date totals almost 150 million.

Brian Binley: I am grateful to the Minister. He is always generous in giving way and, as my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) said, it is appreciated. What assessment have the Government made in relation to deferment of VAT payments with regard to indebtedness? When a drowning man sees something in front of him to grab hold of, he grabs hold of it. My concern is that the degree of indebtedness that might be incurred will make more people insolvent, rather than fewer.

John Healey: The Government have not made a precise assessment of that, but the general concern, particularly about cash-flow pressures and sources of credit that will help see companies through this period, has been at the root of the schemes that are now in operation. That was the root of the deal that we did with the European Investment Bank to make sure that we have 350 million for small and medium-sized firms, which has been agreed by UK banks. It is also why we want our banks to lend responsibly again, so that those banks that have taken a good slice of taxpayers' support are required in legally binding agreements to increase the level of lending that they will undertake next year. So Lloyds will increase its lending in the next 12 months by 14 billion over last year's figure, with 11 billion of that to business. RBS will lend an extra 25 billion, 16 billion of that to business.
	In conclusion, I return to the speech that we heard from the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst and to the motion. The speech was long on criticism, as I have come to expect from him, but it was short on solutions and even shorter on commitments that businesses could take seriously, rely on and expect from the Conservative party. Faced with an unprecedented failure of the global financial system, which is now having severe repercussions on jobs, confidence, credit and demand, there are easy criticisms, but there are only hard decisions that need to be taken.
	Recognising the problems, as we do, and recognising the pressures that business faces, we have been clear and committed and are acting in every way we can to help them through the period. That is why we have in place targeted support for business, we have deferred the increase in small companies corporation tax, we have carried out almost 36,000 business health checks, we have the lending schemes in place, an extra 100 million has gone into debt advice, and it is the Government's aim and commitment to try and pay invoices, particularly to small firms, within 10 days.
	On business rates, the Government's package of measures includes, among other things, the commitment to the annual retail prices index cap, the introduction of the small business relief scheme and the regular revaluation every five years. That combination of measures enables the business rate system to raise revenue vital for local services while being certain and fair and, when appropriate, providing reliefs for specific businesses. That is what our amendment to the Opposition motion sets out, and I urge my hon. Friends to support it.

Lorely Burt: More than 20 years ago, my company moved into its first commercial premises. My shock on receiving my first non-domestic-rates bill stays with me to this day: You mean I have to pay all that without even having my bins emptied? What am I paying the rates for? I cried. I imagine that that innate sense of unfairness at the Government's milking of a person's business for cash has been replicated among many business owners throughout the years.
	On complaining to my local authority, I discovered that it had no hand in setting the rates, which had been set by central Government; the local authority would not have any interest in providing a service, given that the money that it was instructed to collect went straight into Government coffers. I know that some of the money is reallocated back and that local authorities see some of the fruits of their labours, but it seemed wrong to me then that I, the business rate tax payer, was powerless, and that the local authority had no power either. It just played the role of tax collector.
	There have been a number of attempts to link various payments from businesses to the quality of service that they receive. There are business improvement districts, for example. When businesses are strong participants in a bid, the districts seem to work well, although some have enjoyed mixed success. However, at least businesses get a vote and a say in such a bid.
	As has been mentioned, we recently debated the Business Rate Supplements Bill. We supported it because we recognised that major infrastructure developments such as Crossrail need businesses to support them financially and that businesses along the route supported Crossrail. Such a big project would not be able to survive without business support. The Liberal Democrats tabled several amendments to the Bill in an attempt to introduce a ballot for all businesses that were to be levied. The measure was supported by the Federation of Small Businesses, the Institute of Directors, the CBI, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and the British Chambers of Commercebut not by the Government. We tabled amendments to give businesses a say by means of a project delivery board, through which the expertise of business could be used in the delivery of improvements supposed to be for the benefit of all. Nevertheless, all those amendments were rejected or talked out.
	Businesses are back more or less where they have always been: paying the piper, but never calling the tune. The Conservative motion proposes that local authorities should have the power to apply local business rate discounts, and there has already been some discussion of that. The proposal goes in the right direction, but it is still only tinkering about on the edges of the problem. We need a proper relationship between the local authority and the businesses operating in its area.
	Businesses might be more willing to pay business rates if they could see what they were getting for their money and if services could be tailored around them; they might be more willing to pay if they had some say in the matter. However, under this Governmentor the Conservativesthe chances of that happening are about as likely as Fred Goodwin's getting a Christmas card from the Prime Minister.

Mark Prisk: He got a knighthood!

Lorely Burt: Yes, he did, but that was some little time ago; I doubt if he would get one today.
	In their amendment, the Government cite no fewer than 12 initiatives that they purport to have introduced to help business, some of which are most welcome. The HMRC scheme allowing deferral of tax payments is welcome. The local authority business growth incentive scheme was welcome, if overly complex to administer, but I understand that its funding has now dropped to 150 million. Why, at a time of crisis, have the Government reduced the ability of local authorities to extend help to local businesses in their area? Perhaps the Minister could comment on that in the wind-ups.
	The amendment mentions the aim of paying Government suppliers within 10 days. I understand that the practicalities of that are causing difficulties, because 10 days is something of a random number, and implementation even of the aspiration seems to be pretty random. If all taxpayer-funded suppliers were paid even within 30 days, that would be a huge improvement for many companies who are having to wait months for payment on Government contracts. The amendment refers to free business health checks. The Minister said that 130,000 have already been carried out, but I would be interested to know what percentage of businesses know about the checks, especially those in the smallest business categories.
	This blizzard of Government initiatives sounds great, but are they achieving any real penetration? Are we just skating about on the surface of an iceberg whose depth we do not know?

Mark Oaten: Will my hon. Friend also consider the possibility of the Government trying to simplify the procurement system so that small businesses can apply for and win contracts much more easily than through the current process, which requires endless forms and delays? Is not that another initiative that needs to be speeded up?

Lorely Burt: My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Procurement is hugely important. Where local authorities have a responsibility to procure locally, simplification of the approved supplier status would be tremendously helpful. Some organisations are trying to work on a simple one-size-fits-all approved supplier application form. I hope that the Government will take that on board and give it some consideration.

Anne Milton: Does the hon. Lady agree that the Minister said nothing that will help the 272 businesses in my constituency which, at the end of transitional relief, face increases of between 5 and 1,000 per cent.? There is no way in which some of those businesses will be able to withstand those sorts of bills.

Lorely Burt: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that intervention. We have been tantalised with a suggestion from the Minister that some form of transitional relief system will be introduced for businesses that will have large increases. I look forward to hearing a little more detail on how that might operate.
	Then there are the big initiatives mentioned in the Government amendment. The 20 billion working capital scheme sounds fantastic, but the wheels are turning too slowly and the money is not getting through. Giving an instruction is not like waving a magic wand. Our beloved Chancellor is not Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the Enterprisehe cannot just say, Make it so, and have the crew comply with miraculous speed. We are not in warp drive; we are not even moving in the right direction. In reality, the Chancellor is more like the captain of the Titanic. There is the icebergthe ship is moving inexorably towards it. He has given the order to change course, but the crew will not turn the ship around fast enough. In fact, the crew are not obeying orders at all. The captain has failed to supervise them properly, and they have become dissolute in their ways. They need taking in hand by a stronger, more far-sighted captainone who saw that iceberg looming years ago. He is a captain who would take firm control, nationalise the banks, which are already in majority public ownership, and steer the ship back on the course of prosperity. I refer of course to the cultured, erudite Captain Picard of the Liberal Democrats, my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable).
	I could go on, but to return to earth for a moment, we should consider another benefit mentioned in the Government amendment, which is the extension of empty property rate relief for businesses with a rateable value of 15,000 or less. I wonder what sort of small business in London would benefit from that empty property rate reliefa purveyor of broom cupboards perhaps, or a car park space owner. The CBI has calculated that at least 5 million sq ft of property has been demolished already to avoid that tax, which is an absolute scandal for business and for the environment. I ask the Minister if we can please see in the Budget an extension of the upper limit on empty property rate relief, at least, which would be sensible.

Andrew Selous: Is the hon. Lady aware that a number of such sites around the United Kingdom have not only been demolished, but left with rude signs in big piles of rubble, telling the Chancellor, No business rates coming in on this one?

Lorely Burt: Yes, I think that there is one on the A40 coming into London, and it is a travesty in every sense of the word. We need a regime that does not force business people, such as one of my constituents in Solihull, to let business accommodation at 50p per sq ft because they cannot afford to pay the rates. Companies should not be profiting from carrying out wanton destruction of perfectly good buildings.

Paul Holmes: Would my hon. Friend agree that the problem is not just the demolition of existing buildings? In Chesterfield, for example, a developer was planning to build three office blocks on a brownfield site at one of the gateways into the town. Having built one, and been hit by the empty business rate at a time of recession, it is not prepared to go ahead with the other developments. Those developments would have meant that office blocks were available to attract new businesses when we come out of recession.

Lorely Burt: My hon. Friend makes a valid point. By the time we get to the end of the recession, where will the buildings be to house the new industry that we will need to prosper?
	The Government amendment refers to the deferral of the small companies rate of corporation tax. That is a big deal, but why did the Government raise it in the first place? They are saying, We will tax you more, but we will leave it a little bit longer before we do in the hope that you survive long enough to be able to pay. Well, thanks very much indeed, Mr. Chancellorthat is really big of you.
	Small business rate relief is welcome, but even more welcome for the Chancellor is the fact that the Government still get most of the revenue. It is a great gesture, but it does not have the Heineken factor. It does not reach the companies that other initiatives cannot reach because it is not automatic. If the Government are serious about helping the smallest, most vulnerable businesses, they could make that change at a stroke, and I am delighted to hear from the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) that there is a glimmer of hope from the Government on this matter. I hope that there will be an announcement to that effect in the near future.
	The amendment mentions other matters, such as the backdating of rent increases for businesses based in ports, which has been discussed at some length. I do not believe that the Government understand what the measure has done to business confidence. How can a business consider with enthusiasm investing in the United Kingdom when the playing field on which it thought it was operating is suddenly turned upside down and it is landed with retrospective rates? Indeed, we have heard that companies are actively considering pulling out of ports. Although the eight years to pay is welcome, the principle has been damaged. The message that the Government are conveying is the worst possible to potential investors.
	Let us consider the latest cause of worry for business and examine two factors that the hon. Gentleman rightly called a double whammy: the abolition of transitional rate relief combined with an average 5 per cent. increase in business rates. Scrapping transitional rate relief will cost business an estimated 100 million. The scheme is due to be implemented on 1 AprilApril fool's day. Unfortunately, tens of thousands of businesses will not appreciate the joke, but I am delighted to hear from the Minister for Local Government that there will be new transitional arrangements. Will they be in place for businesses from 1 April so that the horror that some businesses in the United Kingdom face will not be realised?
	The second element of the double whammy is pushing ahead with business rates at a 17-year high increase of 5 per cent. at a cost of 1.15 billion to business. The retail prices index today stands at 0 per cent., but business rates will be increased by more than 5 per cent. If any member of the Government perceives logic in that, I would be grateful for an explanation. I know that the rates are normally calculated from the RPI in the previous September, but the Government have shown themselves able to act swiftly in announcing new initiatives when crisis measures are needed.
	We must also consider the impact of the revaluation, the implementation of which the Conservative motion asks to be delayed. Some businesses might benefit from the revaluation, and I am glad that the Minister said that some sort of phased transition could be an alternative to delaying it. Of course, we must do something.

Paul Holmes: Does my hon. Friend share the anger of businesses in Chesterfield, which recently contacted me? First, there is the shock of the 5 per cent. business rate increase when inflation is so low, then they find that it is nothing to do with the local council, but all imposed by central Government, to whom the money is sent off, with only 25 per cent. returned to Chesterfield. They do not even get the benefit of its being spent on the town centre in Chesterfield to improve its attractiveness to businesses.

Lorely Burt: Indeed. That is the reason for our policy of returning the ability to determine the rates to local authorities. We understand that there must be some sort of redistributive mechanism to take account of more and less wealthy areas, but the complete dislocation of the payment from what local authorities receive is unhelpful for local authorities and business.
	To continue the Starship Enterprise theme, if a tourist group of aliens visited Britain today, I wonder what they would make of it. So let me see, they might saythey have west midlands accents, by the waybusiness funds the economy, which pays for everything. This country is in the worst recession in human living memory, but the Government are not only putting up the taxes that businesses pay on their premises, but making it doubly hard for businesses, by removing the smoothing mechanism that, until things got really bad, helped them to manage the increases in their payments. The Government think that business activity is going to shrink by more than 3 per cent. and that there'll be more than 3 million unemployed by the end of the year. Hmm, and the Government are really unpopular. Well, we don't need our superior intellectual powers to work that one that. That is hardly the way for the Government to live long and prosper, is it?
	The Conservatives are hardly the ones with the answers. The only policy that I can detect is the business loan guarantee scheme. I have listened in vain for new policies and for their announcements of help for business. No fiscal stimulus, no tax supportas the Minister said, the Conservatives are short on solutions. However, the main Liberal Democrat response has to be: Not good enough, Mr. Chancellor. We'll be voting with the Conservatives on this occasion.

Several hon. Members: rose

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Mr. Speaker originally put a 15-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches, but as we now have so little time left, I propose to reduce that to seven minutes, which applies from now on.

Austin Mitchell: I wish to speak exclusively about port rates, so far as they affect my constituency and the Humberside port. A serious situation is developing that will create a mess in the ports, thanks to the inefficiency, the failures and the understaffing of the Valuation Office Agency. It is an institution that combines quite horrendous powers, such as the imposition of retrospective rates, with crippling inefficiency, rather like Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs.
	It was decided in 2000 to end prescriptive rating of the statutory ports and to replace it with individual rating of port businesses, which was to be introduced in 2005. The Minister said that people should have known that that would happen, but so should the Valuation Office Agency. It should have had the valuations prepared for 2005, when individual rating began, but it did not. The result was that port businesses continued to pay rates under the old system, which was the cumulo system, whereby the rent on the property paid by the operator included the rates, which were then paid by the port ownerAssociated British Ports in Humbersideto the local authority.
	The Government's little homilythat not having individual rating of the port businesses would disadvantage other competing businessesis therefore so much nonsense. They are asking businesses to pay rates twice, because the cumulo system continued up to last year. That means that if port businesses are to be charged retrospective rates as well, they will be charged twice, which is not exactly a system to advantage businesses in the ports.
	Meanwhile, like Rip Van Rating, the sleeping Dutchman, the Valuation Office Agency woke up in 2006 to the fact that it needed to reassess all those businesses. However, it did not do so until 2008 in many cases. In 2008, businesses in Humberside were getting big new assessments and, both this year and last year, a demand for retrospective payments of three and a half years of rates on those big new assessments. That is crippling. Those businesses cannot make the money back by making charges on the transactions that they completed over the past three and a half years, so how are they to pay those big retrospective rate bills?
	What has happened is unjust, unfair, incomprehensible and any other adjective that one might care to useI have not had time to go through the thesaurus, but there must be lots more adjectives that describe that monstrous procedure whereby businesses are being asked to pay two sets of rates, one of them retrospectively, on a big scale. What is so farcical about the situation is that Ministers have gone to ABP, the port owner, which has received rebates on the rates that it paid on behalf of other port businesses, and asked, Please would you give this money to the port businesses that paid it in the first place? and ABP has said no. That is ludicrous and double impotence on the part of the Government. They tell us that they cannot stop retrospective rating, but they also tell us that they cannot get the money back from ABP that was paid in rates in the first place. It is like a chorus of castratidouble impotence all over the place! It is just not good enough for Ministers to be telling us that there is nothing we can do in this ludicrous situation to get the money back to the people.
	The Government tell us that they cannot get the money back retrospectively without changing the law. Well, I have not noticed that we are overwhelmingly busy in this place, passing legislation every day, with a frantic legislative programme. There is plenty of time and space: the Opposition have said that they will support it; the Liberals have said they will support it, so what is holding us back from doing what is obviously necessary? I cannot accept the Nuremberg defence that we are only obeying orders and must do this.
	Next week, we will be debating orders to provide for the eight-year payment scheme, which is itself an aid to industry that the Government claim they cannot give by abolishing the retrospective rating. We will have to make a decision. If we reject it, it will put port businesses in a mess, as they will have to pay immediately, but it will also put the Government in a mess, as they will have to decide what to do about the situation.
	I am intellectually puzzled and mystified as to why we are doing this and persevering with it, although I am delighted to see that the Opposition have taken up my solution, which is to scrap what has gone before, begin over again in 2010 with new assessments that year, and forget the whole businessputting it down to the inefficiency of the Valuation Office Agency, which caused the problem in the first place. Why do we not do that? It could be that we want to give a good campaigning issue to the Opposition; they are not doing particularly well in the polls at the moment. It might be that they will benefit from this exciting issue. At this stage of the electoral war, we might need a futile gesturebut I do not know; I am not master of the political science behind this issue.
	I ask my right hon. and hon. Friends, and particularly Treasury Ministers, whether they want to hit small and medium-sized businesses at the docks when we are trying to help small and medium-sized enterprises. Do we want to bankrupt port businesses when we are trying to develop an export drive based on the competitiveness given to our industries by devaluation? Do we want to put port employees out of work at a time of rising unemployment? Do we want to cripple ports that are big businesscertainly in Humberside, and we rely on themand drive business elsewhere, perhaps to Europe, perhaps to other British ports, or perhaps put them out of existence?
	If my right hon. Friends want to do all that, I say that they should persevere and carry on: let us go ahead and watch the payments coming in, if they do come in, month by month, and watch the businesses go bankrupt month by month. If they do not want to do thatand I hope no Labour Ministers are that daft that they do not want to change this incomprehensible systemthen for heaven's sake change it, and act quickly.

Peter Luff: You can get a better class of metaphor in Grimsby than you can in Solihull, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell), but I am not sure that Ministers appreciated the metaphors that were directed at them. If I am right, they were not meant personally.
	I had hoped to talk a little about the local situation in Evesham and Droitwich in my constituency in order to illustrate the broader national points, but time is against me and I approve of the reduced limit so that others can enter the debate. Let me just say, then, that business rates are surprisingly important to business. We must not lose sight of that.
	The Forum of Private Business did a survey this month of 6,000 small firms. When asked what were the most important issues facing them, 65 per cent. of respondents said that it was restoring business confidence. The second most important issue, mentioned by 63 per cent., was restoring consumer confidence. The third, at 59 per cent., was business rates. What rather surprised me was that access to finance and the cost of finance came in 11th and 12th respectively at only 35 per cent. and 29 per cent. Clearly, we are not discussing a side issue in the economy; we are talking about a central issue for small and medium-sized businesses in particular.
	This issue is particularly important for one simple reason of which we must not lose sight: business rates have to be paid in full and on time irrespective of the state of one's business. They cannot be cut or negotiated; the rates are a given. It may be possible to negotiate over staff and rents, or perhaps with suppliers about long-term credit. There are all sorts of things that can be donecutting electricity bills by using less electricity, for another examplebut the rates bill is a given, and it was the third largest cost, as well as the third highest priority, after staff and rents for those businesses.
	Three weeks ago at Prime Minister's questions, the Leader of the House, standing in for the Prime Minister, said:
	Opposition Members have a choice: they can either say to their constituents that there is no help and that nothing can be done, and wring their hands, or they can work to support businesses and bring schemes forward.[ Official Report, 4 March 2009; Vol. 488, c. 845.]
	I have to say that I was rather disappointed by the remarks that the Minister for Local Government made in his opening speech, as he seemed to echo the idea that Conservative Members are suggesting nothing. I was sorry, too, to hear the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt), say the same thing. It is just not true.
	We have suggested a list of initiatives and the most powerful of those is the national loan guarantee scheme. If it had been embraced by the Governmentwe suggested it in Novemberbusiness would be in a much better situation. The Government have brought forward partial schemes, one of which, the working capital scheme, is still not even in place, but we have suggested reform of the financial services sector, action on council tax and action on saversa raft of specific, well-targeted measures that would make things better. I reject absolutely the suggestion made by the Minister, who has fallen below his usual high standards in repeating that old canard.
	For my part, I have tried to do something on small business rate relief with my automatic payment Bill, which was debated in the House on 6 March. I have been in constructive discussions with the Minister and his colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Khan). I withdrew the Bill at their request because negotiations seemed to be going on elsewhere in the Government. I hope that we hear in the Budget that action will be taken on this measure, because it could make a big difference for many small businesses. I emphasise that the Bill involved only a 50 per cent. discount for companies with small rateable values and small numbers of properties, but it would give them what the law entitles them to. Half of eligible businesses are not claiming what they are entitled to, which I think is wrong.
	My Select Committee, as part of its inquiry on post offices, recently went to Wales to see the work that the Welsh Assembly Government are doing. It sticks in my throat a little to say it, but the work that they are doing in this respect is excellent, not only in automatic rate relief for all small businesses within a slightly less generous scheme, but in 100 per cent. rate relief for all small post offices. That is an excellent idea, because those small post offices are some of the most vulnerable and most important businesses in deprived urban and rural communities. That is another suggestion that we should consider embracing in England. Those small sums of money could make all the difference. So often in the House we talk about billions and trillions, but hundreds of pounds can be the difference between survival and failure for so many of the smallest businesses in our land.
	My measure is supported by a bewildering array of organisations, including business organisations and, above all, the Local Government Association, which recognises the difficulty in getting all those small businesses to apply for the relief to which they are entitled. It wants them to get that relief, because it recognises that local authorities will have less work to do in picking up the pieces when companies go bustdoing the Government's dirty work for them, chasing business rate bills that are going unpaid. Local authorities believe that it is in the interest of their communities for the Bill's provisions to go into law and for rate relief to become automatic.
	Ministerial objections have been raised. Ministers say that it would be difficult for local authorities to implement the measure, but local authorities do not agree. The risk of payment being made to ineligible people has been raised, but I have proposed measures that would deal with that comprehensively and effectively. Increased costs for larger businesses have been mentioned. I understand that, but such costs would be nugatory and what they were paying anyhow a couple of years ago. Small businesses, which are the most vulnerable businesses in our society, have a right to expect that from the bigger suppliers, which often do not treat small suppliers with the dignity, respect and commercial sense that they ought to.
	Bizarrely, the Minister offered the idea that not so many companies as we thought are not receiving the relief, but that is an argument for proceeding, because the cost would be cheaper. In the House of Lords last week, Baroness Andrews suggested that putting the measure in place would in some way prevent the Government from doing other things to help small businesses. I really do not understand the logic of that argument and would love to have a private chat with the Minister about what she meant.
	The sum of all small things is a big thing. I am suggesting a small thing, but business rates are a big thing for businesses. The opportunity to deal more broadly with the issue was squandered with the VAT reduction. Forget the arguments about the merits of a fiscal stimulus. That 12.5 billion could have been used so much better to address this problem, protect jobs and protect businesses. We now know that 98 per cent. of Federation of Small Businesses members and 83 per cent. of Forum of Private Business members say that the VAT cut has had no beneficial impact whatever on them.

Anne Main: I thank my hon. Friend for giving way on the point about VAT, because every single one of my businesses that attended my small business summit, with help coming from the chamber of commerce, said that not only is the cut having no impact, but that in many cases it is costing them money. It is having a negative impact, if it is having any impact at all. It is not beneficial.

Peter Luff: I am glad that I gave way to my hon. Friend. She is absolutely right: small businesses are paying a very heavy price for the VAT reduction. It is doing them harm, not bringing them benefit. Even bigger members of the British Retail Consortium have complained about the bureaucracy and cost involved in its introduction, and are very worried about the timing of the return to a 17.5 per cent. rate during the winter sales period. They are pleading with the Government at least to delay it for an extra month. Today's newspapers are full of stories about retailers quietly putting prices back up this month in order to put the VAT cut on their bottom line instead, thus restoring their margins. It is possible that 70 per cent. of the rate reduction was being passed through, as the Minister said in his opening speech, but I think he will find that that is changing quite fast.
	The priority for the last fiscal stimulus should have been businesses, not consumers. There are many things that it would be good to do, but can we afford to do them now? The Governor of the Bank of England says that we cannot, and I have to say reluctantly that I agree with him, but when it comes to business rates, can we afford to stay where we are? The Government are in a mess that is entirely of their own making, but I plead with them to stop digging and at least to do the smaller, cheaper things that they can do irrespective of the wider fiscal situation in which they find themselves, such as providing automatic rate relief for small firms. Even now, they could cancel the VAT cut immediately and use the money saved to bring about real change that will save jobs and businesses.

David Kidney: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff). I am only sorry that I was not here on the Friday when his private Member's Bill was debated. He put forward an excellent idea, about which I shall say more in a moment.
	Today's debate had not been proceeding for long before the first hon. Member mentioned that today was a quarter day. Businesses large and small in high streets up and down the country are being asked for three months' rent, which for some is the last straw that will break the camel's back. It was reassuring to hear the trade body for British property managers say today that it recommends its members do all that they can to help people to pay their rent, which includes accepting payments monthly even if they are legally entitled to payment for the full three months. I hope that we shall all watch property managers assiduously to ensure that they are being as reasonable as they can be to businesses that might otherwise be struggling. As the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) pointed out, if that does not happen we shall see more and more gaps opening up in our high streets, which would be very damaging to local businesses as a whole.
	Last Friday I met members of my local chamber of commerce for one of our regular discussions. The issues that they raised with me were the continuing difficulty of obtaining credit from banks and a reasonable performance by Her Majesty's Customs and Excise, in most cases, in allowing time for taxes to be paid. They also made a point that has been made today about prompt payment of bills. They said, If only people would adhere to the terms and conditions and pay within 30 days as they are supposed to, that would benefit us greatly. They drew attention to the huge purchasing power of the public sector in procurement contracts, and pointed out that much more could be done locally in terms of goods and services, food, and printing and advertising. Stafford contains the local council's administrative headquarters, a prison, a university, a police headquarters and several hospitals. All those are huge players in their procurement power.
	Of course, members of the chamber of commerce mentioned rates. They were still very annoyed about the business rates on empty properties. I was nervous, even in a rising market, about the implications of those. I saw the argumentin a rising marketin favour of trying to put pressure on people not to leave properties standing empty, but to reduce their rents if necessary in order to obtain tenants. It was a reasonable argument in a rising market, but the market in property prices has now collapsed. The least that the Government can do is provide what they have announced so fara temporary relief that will benefit around 70 per cent. of propertiesbut my first Budget representation in this debate is that we need to go further. I think that we should preferably provide a complete temporary relaxation of the tax, but, if we cannot do that, we should certainly do something that will benefit more than 70 per cent.
	I appreciate how difficult the Government's finances will be when it comes to the Budget. If anyone was in any doubt about that, their doubts will have been dispelled by the Governor of the Bank of England yesterday. However, this is an important issue, which is why I have made my representation.

William Cash: I, too, have been having meetings with Stafford chamber of commerce, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman will be aware. We had a very good meeting today with the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, the hon. Member for Dudley, South (Ian Pearson), and with other Members of Parliament, regarding many of the questions that have been raised. Will the hon. Gentleman go so far as to endorse our motion, or will he vote with the Government?

David Kidney: Well, the hon. Gentleman can see how I vote later on. As a Labour MP, I support the Labour Government, but I am making my views about what I think should be done in next month's Budget very clear.
	The small business rate relief is a benefit for many small businesses. Sadly, however, not enough of them even know that it exists, or how to apply for it. A lot has been done to notify people that they can claim and to make it easy to claim, but many still do not do so. That is why the Bill promoted by the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire was a good measure, and my second Budget representation today is that that relief should be automatic. Beyond that, local authorities have a discretion to grant business rate relief in any other circumstances where there is hardship or another statutory provision allows them to do so. Some of the cost of giving the relief falls on the local council, which makes it difficult for it to give that relief, and the rest falls on the business rates pool generally.
	I think local authorities should by now have in place their strategies for responding to this crisis of the business recession and difficulties in keeping people's jobs going, and they ought to have a strategy for giving relief where they possibly can. In my areaStafford and Staffordshirewe recently benefited from the release by the Government of the last of the LABGI money. I am grateful to the Government for releasing that money. In Stafford and Staffordshire together, it amounted to more than 1 million extra. I have made my representations to the two local authorities that there is a pot of money, which they had not been expecting when they set their budgets, that can be used as part of a strategy for helping businesses that are asking them for help. So there is a possibility that help can be given.
	I know that we are under time pressure in this debate, but I just want to mention that the LABGI scheme in my constituency has been extremely beneficial for all three years. Every year Stafford has performed well in new businesses starting up and the council benefiting from LABGI. We are one of the best performers in the whole region in gaining that money. As the west midlands has a lower than national average gross value addedGVAsuch an initiative to help councils to help businesses to start up is very beneficial. I know that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government is aware of that, because he was in Stafford last week, but I wish to point out that the local county council froze the rents on its enterprise units this year, again to try to help small businesses through the recession.
	A big procurement contract that is possible all over the country right now is Building Schools for the Future. It has come to Staffordshire, and anything that the Minister can do, along with his colleagues in the other Department that is responsible for that project, to make sure that contracts are let in ways that enable local businesses to benefit as much as possible from them, will be very beneficial. In Stafford town centre currently, the county council has a project at Tipping street for a complete new building for the council and local retail units. Given all the construction workers in my constituency who have come to see me because they are out of work, that is clearly very valuable.
	My final point is that the number of people going through the door of the jobcentre in Stafford has doubled in a year. This is a time of great pressure on the staff who work there, and they are doing a tremendously good job. Whenever a job cannot be found for someone, there is always pressure for training, training, training. Any initiative to get people into training is very valuable. I noticed one this week from universities called Enrol for free for people in receipt of jobseeker's allowance. That is a very useful tool, which I hope we will see more of in the coming weeks and months.

Andrew Selous: I shall be brief because I know that time is short. I represent an area where, sadly, the unemployment figure is considerably higher than it was when my party left office in 1997, there are many empty premises and, throughout the constituency, only 160 job vacancies are advertised through Jobcentre Plus. The issues that we are discussing are crucial because the one thing I do not want to see is that unemployment total going even higher, and I fear that unless we do something about business rates, among other issues, it will do so.
	I make no apology for running through some specific concerns about business rates that have been raised with me directly by local businesses. One small business woman came to me not long ago concerned about how the valuation office had come to her shop and done a quick zap with a laser gun; although the people had been there for only a couple of minutes, a few days later she got a bill for an extra 900. She complained to me that no account had been taken of local conditions.
	A business man whose business is close to that lady's saidI raised this with the Minister earlierthat his business is paying the same amount as is being paid on a much larger building opposite. A firm has offered to challenge that situation, but it will take 800 to do so. The Minister has said that a procedure involving tribunals is available, but it is complicated and it costs money; it is a bit like saying that a judicial review is open to everyoneit is not if it costs money. There are thus some issues to address regarding fairness.
	Someone from a small engineering business has complained that her business is not eligible for the small business rate relief because it was registered only in June or July, and was not on the register on 1 April. I would like some of the 12.4 billion that the Government have wasted on their VAT cut to be put towards helping businesses that just missed the deadline by a couple of days, because that would have been more helpful. I would also like some of that VAT money to have helped another business, which told me that its rateable value was 15,500. That is 500 over the limit and thus the business is not eligible for any small business rate relief. I would have used some of the 12.4 billion to introduce a taper and help businesses that find themselves just over that limit. The couple involved have worked hard setting up this business, they employ people locally and they fear that the business will not be around much longer.
	The Government are always telling us about the initiatives that they have introduced for business, but I wish to read a quote from a local business person in my constituency, who said that she had contacted the valuation office. She stated:
	I am not going to hold my breath as we have had so many government leaflets, brochures and advertisements about how to save your livelihood during this credit crunch but to be truthful not a lot of practical help is available and the money spent on all that paper work and people
	could be better used. Those are not my words; they are the verdict of a local business woman on what the Government have done. Something on business rates would be practical, it would help cash flow and it would be much more use.
	The central point I wish to make to the Minister is that I do not think he or the Government have grasped the fact that many of these small businesses will not be around to pay business rates in future unless we do something now. We all understand the arguments for a sustainable tax take to pay for decent public services in the years to come, but unless we do something now the base of businesses that there will be to pay business rates in the future will be severely diminished. Something needs to be done urgentlyeven if the relief is only for a year or twoand I would have used some of that 12.4 billion that the Government wasted on that VAT cut. They did that when we already had discounts of 70 per cent. or so in our shops and businesses, as my hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans (Anne Main) pointed out to the Prime Minister and others very eloquently.
	Of course, I back the automatic small business rate relief and, as an Englishman, I find it preposterous that it is available in Wales but not to businesses in my constituency or throughout the whole of the United Kingdom. Let us have a bit of equity. I would like to know how the Welsh got this without our getting it, as would some of my local small businesses.
	My party has very practical proposals to ensure that local councils could keep any increase in business rates over and above what they were expecting to receive for a six-year period. That would give local councils an incentive to get more businesses into their areathere has not been enough incentive, and not enough of our local councils are hungry to attract extra businesses to their area. That proposal is a thoroughly good one, as is our proposal to allow councils to provide discounts on business rates, provided they could make up the income foregone or reduce costs in other areas. Those are practical measures; they are local solutions for local areas, and that is entirely sensible. Of course, these go alongside the proposals that we have made for a national loan guarantee scheme, cuts in corporation tax for small businesses, cutting the national insurance contributions for some of the smallest businesses, and deferring VAT bills.
	I have to express my own reservations, echoed by a business man in my constituency to whom I talked last week, about the loading of taxes on empty premises. What is the point of destroying our stock of business premises? It is the seedcorn for future jobs and that has not been a good move.

Richard Shepherd: Shortly after university I started a small retail company. It is still going, and I remain a director, so I declare that interest as recorded in the register.
	The full title of this debate is Implications of business rates and the recession for businesses, and I am very pleased that the Economic Secretary will reply to the debate, because he and I both represent constituencies in the black country. In fact, Walsall is the centre of the Black Country chambers of commerce. Aldridge-Brownhills reflects many of the issues that are at the heart of this debate and will be so for many an industrial town.
	The transition to the uniform business rate took money away from industrial areas and distributed it to other areas. I see that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) is in his place, and he knows the Birmingham area well. Walsall lost 5 million from the change from the old business rate system while Worthing gained a great deal of money. I do not know the circumstances of Worthing, but the argument was always that the dereliction and the industrial illnesses that followed industry were compensated by the fact that the towns set an industrial rate for their arealocalism, perhaps.
	The UBR went through the House easily, and the property industry was slow to pick up on what it actually meant. The costs lie at the heart of the unemployment issue, and that is a serious charge. The Economic Secretary will remember the early 1980s, which saw almost the collapse of large-scale manufacturing industry in the west midlandsit was not the only part of Britain in which that happened, and there were reasons for it. So severe was that collapse that the Government of the time created rate-free industrial areas, which meant that factories could be built there without having the burden of rates. That is how serious it was.
	Some people are now predicting that unemployment will rise to 3 million, and possibly more. That would be worse than the unemployment of the early 1980s, but the Economic Secretary will remember the vast areas of dereliction that followed when companies were forced, before the scheme came in, to demolish buildings. The pious and the wise said that they were old buildings anyway and it was just as well to get rid of them, but they were the source of much employment. I think it was Lord Heseltine who came up with the idea of designated business-rate free areas. There was one in London and one in Liverpool, and the west midlands definitely had one. That shows the severity of that recession.
	Now we face a different problem. Many areas are hurting, such as recently built shopping malls, where properties are rated at the highest end of the rentable market, invariably with clauses that say the rents can only go up. No one should think that employment in retail is negligible in this economy; it is in fact significant and substantial. These shopkeepers include some large companies. We saw Woolworths gowe can wave that goodbyebut a lot of people were employed by that company and it provided employers' national insurance at 12.8 per cent. while the employees paid nearly 10 per cent. too. Those revenues to the Government sustain employment, and so the increases are very worrying.
	I shall give an example of a building that is designated new build, although it was a very elegant refurbishment, in central London. I can talk about this from personal experience, so it is not a vague or illusory illustration. The rent for a less than 5,000 sq ft shop in a central London borough is 270,000, set in 2004. The uniform business rate for the same shop, last year, was 124,740. That is what is confronting many a small business. This business employs about 60 people, some of them part-timers and all of them paying national insurance contributions while the employer pays the employers' national insurance contribution. That is a huge sum for that business to pay, yet it is providing employment in these dire times.
	Today, I walked from Tottenham Court road to see what has happened there. At one time, the area was the centre of London's book trade, but now there are empty shops and fast food outlets. That is where we are getting to. I urge the Government to take seriously the employment side of all their equations and to think about what is happening. The uniform business rate and the nearly 50 per cent. multiplier of whatever the rent is are what kills the prospects for many companies and thus the employment of many people.

Brian Binley: I have a quick and simple message for those on the Government Front Bench. I want to concentrate on the plight of small business and to make the point that it is in serious trouble, much of which is due to this Government. The Government are doing lots of things not very successfully because they did not take into account the fact that they had to administer and manage their projects. Also, I want to say that they could have seen rates as a real way of putting capital into local business, but they failed to understand that. The difference is that loans must be paid out, but rates, if the Government wish to offer relief, do not have to be taken. That was the major point that I wanted to make.
	There are a number of Government schemesI have all the figures herebut they are not working. It is very simple. Business rates in the UK are three times higher than those in any other European country and higher than those in the USAwhat a millstone to put around the necks of our businesses. The Government could have helped by ensuring that there was real relief for small business, but that has not happened. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff) has proposed an action that I hope the Government will take up, but we have not yet heard that that will happen. Perhaps we will tonight.
	Finally, the Government have decided that they will go ahead with a 5 per cent. increase in business rates. At this time, that is sheer madness, and I hope that even at this late stage they will rethink and will give small business some hope by saying that they have decided to use the present rate of inflation, at the very least, rather than the rate that was relevant when they decided to levy a 5 per cent. increase on business rates. I hope that they will change their minds.

Mark Prisk: This debate has been short, but timely. It has shown that the Government's policies on business rates are causing real harm.
	We began with an excellent contribution, as one would expect, from my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), who brought to bear his characteristic charm and tremendous experience in the field. I thought that he exposed very neatly the weaknesses in the arguments over ports, and in the other issues raised by hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber.
	We then had a characteristically generous contribution from the Minister for Local Government. I confess that I have soft spot for him, as we spent more hours than I care to remember in Committee Room 10 debating the Finance Bill. He has always been what he was todaythe defender of the indefensibleand he was on particularly good form this afternoon. I noticed that he struggled a bit when the googly came from his own side, in this case from the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd), but he did do one very important thing: he put it on the record, I believe for the first time, that the Government are committed to reducing the poundage and therefore the burden of business rates if the retail prices index is negative in September. We look forward to holding the Government to that commitment.
	We then had a contribution from the hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) that was literally from another planet. It was a fascinating run through Star Trek and, I think, Titanic. I suspect that the ending was nearer that of the latter movie than the former and, being a gentleman of a certain age, I thought that the metaphor was perhaps a little stretched. However, the hon. Lady is often right about these matters, and she made a good point about there being a genuine cost to small businesses.
	The hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) made a contribution, and then we had an excellent speech, as one would expect, from my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff). He was concise but thoughtful, and he set out the key arguments about why we need to look at making small business rate relief automatic.
	The hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) made an excellent contribution, and his remarks were intelligent and balanced. I was pleased to see that, like the Minister for Local Government, the hon. Gentleman indicated his support for making small business rate relief automatic. We look forward to them joining us in the Division Lobby, should the opportunity arise.
	My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) made an excellent contribution and, as he often does, he highlighted the human cost of failed Government policies. He did that in an extremely powerful manner, and he quoted a constituent of his who said that the problem with the Government is that there is not a lot of practical help, and who wondered why the money could not be used better.
	Finally, my hon. Friends the Members for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) and for Northampton, South (Mr. Binley) both made strong and excellent contributions. Both have always fought the corner of small firms and, although my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, South made a short speech, it was as effective as ever. I hope that the Economic Secretary to the Treasury was listening to what my hon. Friends said, and that he will answer the points that were raised when he replies to the debate.
	As you know, Mr. Speaker, Ministers' press releases regularly claim that they are providing real help for businesses, yet the view of business is that it is all talk and no action. For example, the Government's amendment talks proudly of their flagship working capital scheme. It was announced eight weeks ago as the centrepiece of Government proposals, and it was meant to provide 20 billion of loan guarantees from 1 March. However, it is nearly 1 April now, and not a single company has benefited financially from the scheme.
	Or what about the automotive assistance package? Promised in November and launched in January, it was valued at 2.3 billion and we were told that it would provide real help to the car industry. What has happened? How much of that money has reached businesses? Well, according to the answer from the Minister and despite all the talk, not a single loan guarantee has been issued yet.
	Since the fall of Lehman Brothers last September, it has been clear to everyone that urgent action is needed, both in the banking system and to deliver working capital to the rest of the economy. That is why Conservatives set out a plan last November for a single, national loan guarantee scheme that would help viable businesses of all sizes and in all sectors. It would be simple, easy to access and of course easy to understand. As several Members pointed out, had Ministers taken our advice then the scheme would now be up and running, helping businesses through the recession.
	Despite Ministers' protestations that somehow the Opposition have nothing else to offer, the truth is that we have proposed a number of schemes, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire rightly pointed out. Payroll taxes for the smallest employers should be cut by 1 per cent. Small company corporation tax rates should return to 20p in the pound.
	As we have heard from many Members, rising business rates are causing real problems. When I meet businesses, as I am sure other Members do, one of the critical questions that is always raised, especially in small businesses, is about rates. The reasons are simple. First, firms pay out thousands of pounds in bills but they receive nothing directly in return. The hon. Member for Solihull was right to make that point.
	Secondly, business rates are a fixed overhead. They remain the same in the good years and the bad, so when the economy shrinks business rates hurt all the more. That is why we believe that the Government's rates policies cause serious damage. After all, what is the sense of imposing 1 billion of extra business rates on empty property just as we head into a recession? Why compound the problem with up to 600 million in supplementary rates? It just adds insult to injury.
	We heard a powerful contribution from the hon. Member for Great Grimsby about how the Government's policies on ports damage those enterprises. Without consultation or proper economic assessmentas the Minister admittedthe Valuation Office Agency issued new bills to each separate occupier. Those bills are retrospective and reach right back to 2005. As we have heard, the result could be ruinous for port businesses across the country; from London to Liverpool, from the Humberit was nice that one of its representatives, the former Deputy Prime Minister, could join us, albeit momentarilyto other ports such as Falmouth in Cornwall.

John Gummer: I represent Felixstowe, which is a major port. Is not the problem that the tax is retrospective, so no one could have taken it into account? No business can operate in that way. Is it not another example of the fact that nobody in the Government seems ever to have run a business, so they do not understand that such measures damage businesses irretrievably?

Mark Prisk: My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. He shows his business experience. If people are not advised in advance, they cannot plan. Despite all the Minister's protestations at the Dispatch Box earlier, the simple truth is that time and again the Government have shown themselves economically illiterate. I am afraid many businesses feel that is representative of all Ministers in whatever Department they happen to sitalthough it is nice to see the Economic Secretary on day release from the Treasury. We look forward to his contribution. I hope that he will be able to improve the standard of economic literacy.
	I shall be honest. The Chancellor has made a concession on the issue, but his decision to let firms pay in instalments completely fails to tackle the problem in company law. It was touched on by the Minister, but the result is that the huge tax bills will still count as liabilities and could thus in some cases make firms insolvent. I conclude on that topic with the questions the hon. Member for Great Grimsby asked of his own GovernmentI am sorry he is not in the Chamber at the moment. Do we really want to cripple ports? Do we really want to put people out of work? I hope that the Economic Secretary will answer his colleague's questions.
	It is not just the ports that are suffering. As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, the majority of councils have already reported that firms are struggling to pay their business rates, with small firms most at risk. Worse is to come. Over the next few weeks, thousands of firms will face a double whammy when rate bills rise by 5 per cent. and transitional relief ends. As several Members mentioned, the annual uplift of 5 per cent. is based on last September's retail prices index, yet, as we have also heard, that month's figure was a 17-year peak and is in sharp contrast to RPI today, which stands at zero. The cost? For business, it will be 1 billion. The cost in jobs will be equally grim.
	The uplift comes just as transitional relief from the last revaluation ends. That unhappy combination means that for some firms, the increase in their rates bill will be enormous. We have today heard of increases of 30 per cent., 100 per cent. and, in some cases, perhaps over 500 per cent. Retailers alone face paying an extra 250 milliona sum that they can ill afford, given the difficult state of our high streets. As my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire pointed out, it is often the smallest firms that hurt the most. In London council areas, the typical local newsagent faces a rise of 400 to 500; many of us can relate to that situation in our constituencies. For some small firms, that is 500 that they simply do not have. Of course, the arrangements for transitional relief and for the annual uplift have been in place for some time, but that makes it all the more puzzling why Ministers who profess their wish to help have stood idly by and, in the Prime Minister's phrase, done nothing.
	The same question hangs over small business rate relief, which was introduced in 2005. It provides up to 50 per cent. relief from business rates on premises worth up to 15,000 outside London. As such, it rightly seeks to help the smallest firms, yet last year it became increasingly clear that many firms were not claiming the relief. The Federation of Small Businesses estimated that up to half of eligible businesses were missing out, and many Members mentioned that we are talking about a potential saving of 1,100 each year. Although there were wide variations in take-up, it is clear that many businesses were either unaware of the relief or deterred by all the red tape and bureaucracy.
	For that reason, last year we put on our party website a very simple ready reckoner that would make the system simple and easy. That is the crucial reason why we want to make sure that the rate relief continues. Since then, of course, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire has introduced his excellent Bill. He is right to raise points on the subject, and to question the Minister. I hope that the Minister will reply to those questions in his speech.
	To conclude, I have no doubt that Ministers wish to help, but when it comes to business rates, their policies are causing harm, not helping. Instead of helping retailers, they are taxing them another 250 million. Instead of promoting trade, they are retrospectively taxing our ports. Instead of keeping costs down, they are adding another 1 billion to rates bills, just as the recession bites. To cap it all, those poor souls who see their business fold will find that there is another 1 billion in tax on the properties where they once worked. There is a growing gap between ministerial rhetoric and the reality for businesses on the ground. My fear is that as a result of the gap between Ministers' words and deeds, hundreds of firms and thousands of jobs could yet be lost.

Ian Pearson: Today's debate demonstrates the strength of feeling among all Members of the House about the importance of small businesses to the UK economy. We know that small businesses employ more people than any other kind of businesses in the private sector, and that there are a record 4.7 million small businesses in the country today. The UK business environment is recognised as being among the best in the world.
	Given the limited time that I have to respond to the debate, it is clear that I must focus on some of the major issues. My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) spoke exclusively about rates in ports. Rather than responding in detail now, I refer him to the fact that there will be a debate on the Floor of the House next Wednesday on the regulations that the Government propose to introduce, so he will have the opportunity to debate them.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) made an important speech. I very much take his point about the need for property managers to act reasonably at this time. He is also right to emphasise the procurement powers of local authorities. As my hon. Friend knows, the Minister for Local Government visited Staffordshire recently. We certainly welcome the freezing of rates for business centres across the county, to which he referred. That is a great example of a Labour-led county council taking effective action. I note the Budget representations that he made to me on empty property relief and on small business rate relief. Obviously, the Budget will be announced next month.
	The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) raised a number of local examples of businesses in his constituency and variations in valuation practices, which I am sure he will take up through other channels.
	The hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd), a black country neighbour of mine, will no doubt welcome the fact that 7,340 companies in the west midlands have so far deferred taxes, to the tune of 134 million. I agree with him about the importance of retail to the economy of the west midlands and of the UK as a whole, and in many cases I do not think the importance of retail to regeneration has been properly emphasised. He talked about the recession of the early 1980s, which I remember well. I also remember the extremely limited policy response at that time, by contrast with the active measures that the present Government have introduced.
	The hon. Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Binley) did not have the opportunity to do much more than clear his throat, but I am sure we will benefit from his wisdom on another occasion.
	In the remaining time available, I want to cover the Government's response. First, I shall address the subject of the VAT cut, which was raised by a number of hon. Members. There is clear evidence that that cut has been passed on through reductions in prices, and it is transparently the case that it is a 12.4 billion boost to the economy. Opposition Members say that they would not have introduced the VAT cut, they would have done something else. They need to think about whether they are prepared to support a fiscal stimulus to the UK economy. They have opposed us on that all along the road, but they cannot spend money if they are not prepared to commit the resources.
	That is exactly the case with the Conservative proposals in relation to the loan guarantee scheme, which was raised by the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff). The Conservative party is split on that. The shadow Chancellor says that he wants a loan guarantee scheme and pretends that it will not cost any money. The shadow Business Secretary says clearly that the taxpayer will take some of the hit. Whether on the loan guarantee scheme or on inheritance tax, there is clearly a difference of opinion at the heart of the Conservative party.
	Let me move on and explain the Government's enterprise finance guarantee. Hon. Members should be realistic about Government programmes. The enterprise finance guarantee is up and running and is providing support to businesses. The actions that the Government have taken to stimulate extra lending into the economy have, through the asset protection scheme commitments made by Lloyds Banking Group and by RBS, led to an additional 27 billion being introduced into the economy and made available for loans over the next 12 months.
	Under the enterprise finance guarantee scheme, about 30 million was offered to business last week. That is real progress. On the working capital scheme, a Government guarantee that supports 500 million more lending cannot be rustled up overnight. It requires extensive negotiations with the banks because it involves, potentially, taxpayers' guarantees that may be called. If the Opposition are serious, they should consider where the money will come from. They should recognise that such schemes take time and need to be negotiated. They must be right if the taxpayer is not to be exposed to completely unfair liabilities

Patrick McLoughlin: claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).
	 Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.
	 Question agreed to.

Question put accordingly (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.
	 The House divided: Ayes 220, Noes 297.

Question accordingly negatived.
	 Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the proposed words be there added.
	 Question agreed to.
	 The Speaker declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to (Standing Order No. 31(2)).
	 Resolved,
	That this House notes that the Government has recognised the problems that many businesses face and is committed to do all it can to help them through these testing times; recognises the action the Government has taken to give targeted support to businesses including a 20 billion working capital scheme, an aim to pay Government suppliers within 10 days, a cut in the main rate of value added tax to 15 per cent., a deferral in the increase in the small companies' rate of corporation tax, free business health checks, more than 100 million towards debt advice, the HM Revenue and Customs Time to Pay scheme benefiting 93,000 firms by deferring 1.6 billion in tax, and extension of Empty Property Relief; believes the Government's commitment to the annual Retail Price Index cap means that there has been no real terms increase in business rates since 1990; welcomes the Small Business Rate Relief scheme benefiting 392,000 businesses by 260 million in 2007-08; recognises that funding of almost 1 billion since 2005-06 has been provided through the Local Authority Business Growth Incentive scheme; further supports fairness in the system that ensures that properties are revalued every five years with transitional relief to phase in significant increases in bills from revaluation; and acknowledges help provided for businesses, including in ports, receiving unexpected and significant backdated rates bills by introducing an unprecedented eight years to pay, as part of a package of measures that ensures through the rates system there is certainly, fairness and appropriate relief for businesses.

Business without Debate

DELEGATED LEGISLATION

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118 (6)),

Tax Credits

That the draft Tax Credits Up-rating Regulations 2009, which were laid before this House on 9 February, be approved .( Ian Lucas .)
	 Question agreed to.
	 Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

Social Security, Northern Ireland

That the draft Guardian's Allowance Up-rating (Northern Ireland) Order 2009, which was laid before this House on 9 February, be approved .( Ian Lucas .)
	 Question agreed to.
	 Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

Social Security

That the draft Guardian's Allowance Up-rating Order 2009, which was laid before this House on 9 February, be approved .( Ian Lucas .)
	 Question agreed to.
	 Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

Church of England Pensions (Amendment) Measure

That the Church of England Pensions (Amendment) Measure (HC 268), passed by the General Synod of the Church of England, be presented to Her Majesty for Her Royal Assent in the form in which the said Measure was laid before Parliament. (Sir Stuart Bell.)
	 Question agreed to.
	 Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

Ecclesiastical Offices (Terms of Service) Measure

That the Ecclesiastical Offices (Terms of Service) Measure (HC 270), passed by the General Synod of the Church of England, be presented to Her Majesty for Her Royal Assent in the form in which the said Measure was laid before Parliament .( Sir Stuart Bell .)
	 The Speaker's opinion as to the decision of the Question being challenged, the Division was deferred until Wednesday 1 April (Standing Order No. 41A).

Adjournment (May Day)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 25),
	That this House, at its rising on Thursday 30 April 2009, do adjourn till Tuesday 5 May 2009. (Ian Lucas.)
	 The Speaker's opinion as to the decision of the Question being challenged, the Division was deferred until Wednesday 1 April.

Banks and Banking

Ordered,
	That the Bradford and Bingley plc Transfer of Securities and Property etc. (Amendment) Order 2009 (S.I., 2009, No. 320), dated 19 February 2009, be referred to a Delegated Legislation Committee. (Ian Lucas.)

PETITION
	  
	Council Housing (London Borough of Sutton)

Paul Burstow: I present the petition on behalf of tenants in the London borough of Sutton, which includes my constituency of Sutton, Cheam and Worcester Park. It highlights what tenants in my constituency regard as daylight robbery: 38p in every pound of the rents that they pay to the London borough of Sutton goes to the Treasury rather than towards maintaining their homes in my constituency.
	Today, the chair of the Sutton Federation of Tenant and Resident Associations, Jean Crosby, the leader of Sutton council, Councillor Sean Brennan, my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) and I led a delegation of tenants to lobby Parliament, petition the Prime Minister and meet a housing Minister to make the case for decent home funding and a fair deal for rents in the borough of Sutton.
	The petition states:
	The Petition of tenants of the London borough of Sutton and others,
	Declares that, through the rents they pay, council tenants are net contributors to the Exchequer, paying more to the Treasury in negative subsidy than the Treasury pays out in subsidy with current estimates putting the profit from rents to the Government in 2008-09 at 185 million to 200 million; regrets the fact that the review of housing revenue account subsidy is not yet complete and believes that the current system is unfair and unsustainable; further declares that in the current climate and times of hardship for many, rent increases of over 6 per cent. driven by the Government's rent restructuring policy is unjust; further declares that the 10 million taken from Sutton tenants for last year will be increased by three quarters of a million pounds this year, which now represents 38 per cent. of rent income.
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons call upon Her Majesty's Government to reform the system to allow tenants to benefit directly from the rent they pay through investment in the condition of their homes and the quality of the services they receive and to reduce the amount of negative subsidy or at least freeze it until the review is finalised.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	[P000324]

UNPLANNED TEENAGE PREGNANCIES (NOTTINGHAM)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.( Ian Lucas.)

Graham Allen: My constituency has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in western Europe and my city has one of the highest in the United Kingdom. We are now tackling that issue, and no one should doubt that we have serious changes to make and serious challenges ahead.
	In Nottingham in November, we created a teenage pregnancy taskforce, which is designed to be a high level, motivating leadership body to drive our effort in the city. It is made up of myself as chair, the chief executive of the local health service, the director of our children's services, the chief executive of our city council and the lead council member on children's services, as well as a representative from the Department of Health's national support team. The taskforce is designed to provide the co-ordination and the impetus to ensure that our locally agreed plan is turned into action.
	The first task that we set ourselves was to produce a plan of action, which is now done. The plan takes the form of 50 action points, each with an accountable officer who is responsible for implementing it and for reporting to the taskforce on their activity. Many found having a direct line of account to the taskforce a novel approach, but everyone is now making this philosophy work. Each of our monthly taskforce meetings has had four or five reports on action points and progress is reported and encouraged.
	The second thing that we set about doing was appointing at a high level a teenage pregnancy co-ordinator capable of dealing directly with the big players locally, so that the issue can be taken seriously. Interviews for that post will take place in a couple of weeks. The final thing that we did in the burst of activity on teenage pregnancy in Nottingham since November was to employ an outside pair of eyes to examine how the leadership and delivery structure should work and to ensure that all partnersbut particularly the local national health service and children's servicesmesh together effectively. The structure has sometimes been unclear or duplicated. A report on clarifying those leadership structures will be acted upon within about one month.
	The choice is not between silo working and assimilation; it is just about effective partnership working to tackle a serious problem. To some extent that confusion has been replicated at the national level. It is sometimes difficult for those of us on the ground to know where the responsibilities of the Department for Children, Schools and Families end and those of the Department of Health begin. However, we are beginning to find our way around those structures. All the big structural difficulties are being addressed. We now need to move on to the next phase and address both the general and the particular policy answers to teenage pregnancy in our city. However, we do so under the general umbrella of our early intervention strategy in Nottingham.
	Teenage pregnancy does not stand alone. It sits alongside drug and drink misuse, low educational aspiration, low work aspiration, low self-esteem and many other symptoms. All those stem from one root cause, which One Nottingham's early intervention strategy seeks to address by creating a much stronger social and emotional bedrock in the babies, children and young people of our city. Capable, rounded individuals, well parented, will lead to a dramatic reduction in the symptoms that we see around us. Our pioneering circle of early intervention from zero to 18 is now well developed. It is not rocket science; it is just good, solid help, not 10 years late, but when it is neededgood parents, great kids, better citizens.
	On finance, we are not just looking at work over the short term. Rather, we have a long-term approach. Will the Minister consider supporting us in negotiations with the Treasury as we look for long-term sustainable funding? We are considering approaches such as an early intervention bond issue, so that Nottingham's early intervention package can have the assured, long-term future that will be necessary if we are to make the inter-generational change that we need.
	The other specific and unique policy being pioneered in Nottingham, where our early intervention circle overlaps with work on teen pregnancy, is on 11-to-16 life skills. There are many disparate efforts to help young people with the skills that they need to make important life choices, which include personal, social and health education, sex and relationship education, and social and emotional aspects of learningPSHE, SRE, SEAL and other bewildering acronyms.
	The Government have rightly recognised that there needs to be more coherence in that area. Sir Alastair McDonald and his team are conducting a review, which included a recent visit to Nottingham. However, given the seriousness of our local problems, we cannot wait until parliamentary time is found for a Bill to give life to the Government's intention to have a statutory life skills curriculum by 2011. The problems need to be tackled now, so we are, with the understanding and consent of everyone involved, going ahead with an 11-16 life skills programme.
	One Nottingham is funding training and curriculum development, which is taking place as we speak. This will be a natural continuation of our family-nurse partnership, Sure Start children's centres, primary, social and emotional aspects of learning, and all the rest of our circle of early intervention policies. Life choices may literally be made in the teenage years, but they are, in reality, affected by the influences received from birth onwards, and our policies must reflect that.
	Of course, we must continue to help with contraception and advice on pregnancy and child care, but the real answer to unplanned pregnancies is to be found in building the individual's social and emotional capabilities more than a decade before any sexual activity begins. Some further actions are necessary beyond the very helpful framework set by the national teenage pregnancy support team, to which I pay tribute for the assistance that it has given us in the task that we have set ourselves.
	First, as well as the volume of activities around early intervention, we need to be much clearer about the target group that we must engage with to prevent teenage pregnancy. Given that last yearor the last year for which figures are availablethere were 344 teenage pregnancies, we should, by accurate analysis of real-time data, be able to identify if not the next 344, perhaps the broader group or penumbra of about 700 families and develop a serious engagement with them from the earliest possible age, so that life choices can be made effectively. We are a long way from doing thatit is one of the areas on which we need the hardest work. The sentiment has traditionally been that we deal with the problem in a caring and compassionate way once it has arisen, but that is no longer a viable long-term strategy. We need to intervene much earlier with the target groups and tackle the culture and attitudes that lead, almost inevitably in some cases, to early and teenage pregnancy.
	The second issue is the transfer of data into intelligence and actionsomething with which I am sure Whitehall is familiar. An immense amount of data has been collected, much of it several years out of date, but for us to have active and directed policies, there needs to be a much more nimble transfer from real-time data collection into intelligence and policy action. We will then see real things happening much faster on the ground than we do now. We are examining how that can best happen, and hope that the Minister will tell us tonight that the Government will support us in those efforts.
	Thirdly, we need to be much swifter at producing activity to meet specific local circumstances. Commissioning locally has to follow a nationally required legal process that is inspected, scrutinised, monitored, risk-assessed and has a gestation period sometimes longer than a pregnancy itself. Perhaps we can all look at the balance around the word commissioning. It should be an incontrovertible good, but it is not always perceived that way on the ground.
	A fourth specific area that needs attentionone on which I hope to obtain a second Adjournment debate if I am fortunate enoughis our whole approach to absentee fathers. In areas such as mine, the father, often a teenager, will disappear from view as soon as the girl is pregnant, and we need to address the life skills that could lead to those young boys, as well as the young girls, thinking more seriously about sustainable relationships, about raising a family together and about the consequences of single acts that affect both livesand, indeed, the life of the childfor ever thereafter.
	The relaunch of the Child Support Agency in its new guise provides a great opportunity to improve the life chances of our youngest and most vulnerable by ensuring that absentee fathers of babies born to teenage mothers meet their obligations. Nottingham is engaging with them and they are coming to talk to us about the possibilities. I hope that we can move that forward and perhaps even suggest one or two ways forward for the Government.
	To improve the interaction with the public, our target group and the media, we need to take one or two progressive steps. Often, when public service bodies stray beyond direct service provision, they feel uncomfortable with the concept of needing to communicate with those wider groups. That has been evident in Nottingham and we are keen to develop a process of permanent messaging to those groups, not only to reach out through imaginative means such as texting, social network sites, teen magazines and so on to those who need the services, but to give profile and confidence to those professionals and others who work in this area, so that they know that things are being done, too, and feel supported.
	We also need to reach the parents and others in the wider public who set the culture and the attitudes within which we all work and where young people pick up the attitudes that sometimes lead them to make the wrong choices. Those key issues arise from the work that we are doing. Further work on them will take place in Nottingham and I hope that when I meet with the Minister in a few months, I might be able to report some progress and work closely with the Government on them.
	We have made a good start, but we are conscious of the enormousness of the problem that we are trying to address. It is essential that we do not feel that there are quick answers, magic bullets or short-term fixes. Tackling teenage pregnancy, rather like the other difficult social symptoms that are evident in constituencies such as mine, requires thorough and sustainable analysis that leads to action over a generation. This will not happen in two or three years' time. There will be no big change in the trend lines in a couple of years. This requires people to set out their stall for the long term, and that means over a generation.
	Many of the problems that we face in constituencies such as mine are intergenerational. Therefore, it will take a generation to burst out of them and to create a different culture and a different set of attitudes. There are innovative approaches to the issue, and in Nottingham we wish to explore those and use them wherever appropriate. However, innovation cannot be a substitute for getting the basics right and ensuring high-quality joined-up delivery of the approaches that are tried and tested. Our teenage parenting strategy tries to ensure that we balance doing the basics well with introducing groundbreaking new ideas. The problems need to be tackled by effective long-term finance and by long-term cross-party and social consensus, which we are all trying to build at One Nottingham.
	Like those in Sweden, we must ensure that measures last for 40, 50 or 60 years and are not prey to short-term electoral cycle considerations or points scoring. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Minister on the way in which she has conducted the debate at a very high level. I hope that other parties match that and put the children we are trying to help ahead of any partisan political points scoring.
	Setting out our stall for the long term is what has distinguished our efforts in Nottingham during the last three or four years. Our early intervention policies are well established and we hope to bring that cultural and attitudinal change to our efforts to tackle unplanned teenage pregnancy in our city. So far, so good, but we have much to do. I hope to report greater progress to the Minister as time goes by.

Beverley Hughes: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) on securing tonight's debate. More fundamentally, I commend the leadership he has shown on the issuesnot just teenage pregnancy, but early intervention and prevention, reducing inequality and poverty, and leadership of the local strategic partnership. His work on teenage pregnancy falls under that broader umbrella. The lead that he has shown is very important to his city.
	As my hon. Friend said, teenage pregnancy can have serious impacts not only on individuals but on families and communities, for generations. It is both a cause and a consequence of social exclusion and health inequalities, while all too often markedly reducing the life chances of the young people involved and the children whom they produce. That is why the Government are absolutely committed to reducing the number of conceptions among those aged under 18.
	As my hon. Friend knows, I visited Nottingham again very recently to observe the work being done by the youth sector. I was delighted to learn not only that the local authority has included teenage pregnancy in its key priorities under the local area agreements, but that my hon. Friend has committed himself to the important task of chairing the city's teenage pregnancy taskforce for the next few years. As he said, Nottingham saw a 6.1 per cent. reduction in teenage pregnancy rates between 2006 and 2007. That is extremely encouraging, but he recognises, as he graphically explainedas I dothat there is more to be done if it is to be turned into a consistent, long-term trend in the city. His taskforce will play a key role in that. It is vital for a senior team to be in place to drive such a strategy forward. I was also pleased to hear that the taskforce would encourage all local secondary schools to agree on a common life skills programme for 11 to 16-year-olds.
	My hon. Friend rightly highlighted the excellent work already being done by local authority staff, schools, doctors, nurses, people in the voluntary sector and many others. Further promising initiatives in Nottingham include nurse-led outreach projects, a condom distribution scheme, and the sex and relationship education that is taking place in many of the city's schools. I was glad to learn that all that good work was being underscored by additional support from the Department's national support team, which I hope will provide extra impetus.
	The recent drop in Nottingham's teenage pregnancy rates shows that, given those projects and the support that is being provided, the problem, although difficult, is not intractable and we should not give up on it. I know that my hon. Friend does not propose to do so. It is clear that when teenage pregnancy strategies are applied rigorously and robustly, with strong leadership such as that provided by my hon. Friend, they work very well. For instance, since 1998 Newham's rate has been reduced by nearly 25 per cent., Oldham's by over 29 per cent., and Calderdale's by nearly 30 per cent.
	In Nottingham my hon. Friend is leading a rigorous and robust implementation of the national strategy on teenage pregnancy, which we want every local area to adopt. It is based on the very best international evidence, and includes key recommendations and pointers from other countries. First, it emphasises the need for strong senior champions. My hon. Friend's development of the strategy has taken it a step further. I should like to pursue the requirement of naming individuals to be accountable for various elements, because I am sure that it will drive developments even faster and further.
	Secondly, the strategy recommends a well publicised contraceptive and sexual health service for young people which can reach the most vulnerable, who may be apprehensive about visiting such services. Thirdly, it recommends that a high priority should be given to sex and relationship education in schools, with real support from local authorities. Fourthly, it stresses the need to focus targeted interventions on the young people whose risk of teenage pregnancy is highest. As my hon. Friend said, those young people will be individuals if we can identify them, but otherwise they will be groups of young people. It should be emphasised that all these measures need to be applied to boys as well as girls. That has not been a strong element of the strategy in some areas.
	Clear messages should be conveyed to young people about the best ways of resisting peer pressure to have early sex, and about the need to delay sexual activity until they really understand and are ready for it. That, too, applies to boys as well as girls. We must also encourage them to use effective contraception and condoms when they do become sexually active. Fifthly, we must try to reach parents and support them in talking to their children about these issues, because young people say that ideally they would like to get the information and advice from their parents. Many say that their parents do not give it to themthat is particularly what boys tell us.
	Lastly, although it is important to focus on young people in their teenage years when they are sexually active, it is even more important both to consider the context of universal services, so that we provide opportunities for activity and for raising the aspirations of all young people, and to start decades earlier. That is why the Government spent such a lot of time and effort in developing services for younger children, starting with the early yearswith Sure Start centres, extended schools, focusing on early intervention and preventionand dramatically increasing support for parents so that good quality parenting is really possible.
	I want to say a few words about sex and relationship educationSREas it is clearly one of the key factors. We recognise that the quality of SRE across schools is still too patchy, which is why we have announced our intention to make SRE and personal, social and health education statutory. I hope that that will increase the priority schools give to teenage pregnancy and sexual health more generally, with a clear link to specialist health advice either on the school site or in the community. We expect to provide new guidance for schools on delivering SRE by January 2010.
	We know that the vast majority of parents86 per cent.want schools to provide good quality SRE for their children. Some people argue that if we give young people SRE, that encourages them to be sexually active. The opposite is shown to be the case, however. All our international evidence shows that SRE encourages young people to delay sex, while giving them the knowledge and skills they need to make informed choices, not only about sexual health, but about related issues such as alcohol, which can have a strong influence on the potential for unplanned pregnancies and unprotected sex.
	The role of parents is vital. We know that children who have open conversations with their parents are likely to have sex at a later age, and are more likely to take a more responsible approach and to use contraception when they do. However, many parents are not comfortable talking about these issues or do not feel that they are armed with the knowledge or confidence to do so. Almost half of our young people say they get little or no information from their parents, and that is particularly the case for boys. Therefore, we need sex education to support mothers and fathers in this aspect of education, but it should be a partnership between schools and parents, with parents leading on instilling values, and schools providing accurate information and opportunities for young people to develop their ability to make safe and healthy choices.
	I know that Nottingham has seen a very substantial recent reduction in teenage pregnancy, and that has helped to bring about a 7.2 per cent reduction between 1998, when the national strategy started, and 2007, although that is still below the average reduction in England of 10.7 per cent. It is important for us to develop our learning as Nottingham goes forward and implements the strategy through its taskforce, so that we can make further learning available for other local authorities in order to help them, too. Central to the success will be joint planning and commissioning between the local authority and the primary care trust. It was a key message in the recent child health strategy that those two bodies particularly must work together. My hon. Friend also mentioned some innovations in Nottingham in which I am interested, including the early intervention bond. I should be very interested to discuss with him how that concept develops.
	Not many people may be aware that, since records began 30-odd years ago, the UK has had a high rate of teenage pregnancy compared with other comparable countries, especially those in Europe. If one tracks the rate in the UK compared with that in other European countries, one finds that the issue started to be tackled in other European countries in the 1980s and 1990s, but it was not tackled here then. In addition, during that period we saw child poverty nearly treble and inequality and unemployment increase dramatically. At a time when other European countries were tackling this issue and their rates were decreasing, our rates remained at a historically high level.
	Since the national strategy was introduced there has been a 10.7 per cent. reduction in under-18 conception rates across the board. Later this year, we will be launching a high-profile media campaign, aimed at young people, on the effective use of contraception. None the less, the current rate is the lowest rate of teenage pregnancy that this country has had for the past 20 years, which clearly shows that, although we would like to go faster and further, we can have an impact on this problem. The teenage pregnancy strategy that we have in place is the right one to drive down the number of under-18 conceptions but, as my hon. Friend said, teenage pregnancy is still an issue of real concern.
	Although some teenage parents do well, the reality is that being a parent during adolescence makes life very tough. We also know that the children of young parents can often inherit the legacy of poor health, low expectations and wasted talents, and that teenage mothers are far more likely to suffer from post-natal depression. So by reducing teenage pregnancy rates and improving support for teenage parents, we have begun to break this cycle, to raise aspirations and to improve the life chances for many thousands of young people. We have now to make sure that that continues to happen in the years ahead, and I want to work with my hon. Friend, whom I commend once again for the incredible leadership that he has shown in his city, on taking forward this issue.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 House adjourned.